REVIEWS
| Date | 01 July 1969 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1969.tb01227.x |
| Published date | 01 July 1969 |
REVIEWS
NOT
IN
FEATHER BEDS.
By
the VISCOUNT RADCLIFFE,
P.c.,
G.B.E.
[London:
Hamish Hamilton.
1968.
viii
and
277
pp.
42s.
net.]
UNDER
this rather whimsical title, which is taken from the speech of Sir
Thomas More at his trial, Lord Radcliffe has collected for publication twenty-
two
pieces-“ lectures, addresses, speeches, articles
”-from
among his pro-
ductions in these types of work since the end of the war. The legal profession
to whom they are naturally for the most part addressed should be very
grateful for his having made them available in this way, for certainly during
the period in question the lawyers who have addressed themselves to the wider
problems of administering justice in
a
non-technical way with the same insight
and width
of
outlook as Lord Radcliffe could easily be counted without using
up the fingers of one hand. In addition he has an urbanity
of
style with
which readers of the law reports are familiar, and the whimsicality to which
I
have already referred which seasons the seriousness of his approach to most
of the topics which he discusses in these pieces.
But
I
must not convey the impression that these essays will appeal only
to lawyers for there is much that any cultivated reader will find of interest
and often stimulating; for the legal thinking involved will almost always
be within his grasp; some of them indeed were broadcasts
or
appeared
originally in newspapers. In any case more than half of the pieces are not
in any way concerned with legal matters, although even in some of these
Lord Radcliffe uses a juristic idea
or
possibly
a
legal analogy to bring home
his thought. Perhaps
I
should say
at
this point that six of the essays are
definitely concerned with the law, four
or
five have a legal flavour, usually
pronounced; three are definitely concerned with India and another largely
so;
three with art and problems connected therewith-that is, pictorial art;
five are biographical in greater
or
less degree, including memorial addresses
and appreciations-how fortunate to have one’s life and work recalled by
such
a
master!; two are literary; and two are concerned with universities
and their work.
As
one would expect all are within reasonable compass,
varying in length from four pages to thirty.
On several of these chapters it is tempting to write something in the
nature of an essay. Certainly to lawyers
a
number of them provide material
for long pondering on the lawyer’s place in society and on the subject-
matter of his work
in
the present-day world; they touch on matters which
are basic to our whole outlook and practice.
I
would not describe them as
a
“trumpet call to action,” but
I
can well imagine their influencing
permanently
a
young lawyer enibarking upon his career. Lord Radcliffe’s
attitude is searching and his analysis is apt to be severe: thus he is impatient
at
the use of
“
cant phrases like the Rule of Law
”
which are used, particularly
by lawyers, without much thought
of
their real significance. Lawyers “are
under
a
peculiar duty to reniernber that the assumptions upon which all
this rests have always been tenuous ones”
(Law
and
Order).
He is of
course conservative in his outlook but he is inspired by deep regard
for
the
common
law,
falling short
I
think of veneration; by
a
very real religious faith,
and by
a
love of England which burns with
a
clear flame, even if it flickers
occasionally in the cold winds of the modern world-all this shines through
many of the pages in the present book. Some
I
enjoyed particularly,
as
re-reading
“
Law and the Democratic State,” an address to the Holdsworth
Club which made
a
wide impression when delivered in
1956;
“
Ilow
a
Lawyer
450
.JL~LS
19G9
REVIEW
9
.
451.
Thinks,” an address
to
medicals which has
in
it
much upon Which lawyers
can reflect with profit, and the title essay of the volume which was delivered
at
the Northwestern University School of Law and contains not only
a
moving account of Sir Thomas More’s confrontation with his accusers, but
eloquent and well pondered passages on courage--“the history of the world
is largely
a
record of how brave men have been.”
He
reminds
us
of what
our
own legal system owes to “judicial valour.”
In “Censors” (the Rede Lecture at Cambridge for
1961)
Lord Radcliffc
seems on the verge of
a
break-through on the problem of liberty in the modern
state, but this essay rather falls away. This problem
is,
however, never
far from the author’s mind and no student of the subject can afford to
neglect what he has to say about it. Consider for example his unconventional
reflection on
“
Milton and Liberty
”
which incidentally seems
to
show that
the poet was
300
years
ago
worried about these matters in much the same
way
as
the lawyer is today.
Lord Radcliffe clearly has
a
deep interest and affection for India and
his
study of the life and work of Mount Stuart Elphinstone, one of his
longest essays, is
a
little masterpiece. But even in the slighter essays it is
a
delight to bc in touch with this rich mind, and one puts down the volume
with regret that more was not garnered within its cover: with regret too
that someone, presumably the publisher, should have insisted on the execrable
colour photograph
of
Lord Radcliffe which provides the frontispiece, and
is used
as
a
dust-cover-it might well put
a
sensitive reader off!
CI~ORIXY.
LIBEL
AND
ACADEMIC
FREEDOM.
By
ARNOLD
M.
ROSE.
[Minnea-
polis: The University
of
Minnesota Press. Oxford: The
University
Press.
1968.
xii
and
287
pp.
(with
index).
NO
price
stated.]
Tms book is of considerable interest to
all
concerned with freedom of speech,
not only to those concerned with academic freedom,
as
its title rather suggests.
It
is also, as Professor Paul Frcund states in his Foreword, “absorbing”
as
a
personal document in the story of the life,
alas
prematurely cut short,
of
its author
Dr.
Rose who was
a
professor of sociology
at
Minnesota University.
Professor Freund quotes
a
remark of Judge Learned Hand to the effect
that “he could not think
of
a
more terrible personal ordeal, apart from
a
serious illness, than involvement in
a.
law suit,” and adds the reflection
“
that
when the law suit is brought for libel these elements are greatly intensified.”
This boos provides
a
sermon for Professor Freund’s text: the misuse
of
the law of libel
as
a
political weapon.
Professor Rose was well known in the civil rights movement in the U.S.A.;
he was particularly concerned with the racial issue, and
as
a
young man hc
had assisted Gunnar Myrdal with the preparation of his great work
An
American Dilemma.
This and his liberal outlook while
a
member of the
Minnesota legislature made him anathema to the extreme right wing in that
state,
and
a
bitter and scurrilous attack was opened on him by his opponents
in which, hardly surprisingly, the accusations of
‘I
Communist
”
and
‘‘
security
risk
”
played
a
prominentprt. Whether these accusations were deliberately
made with the object of producing
a
libel action is not clear but Rose felt
that he could not ignore them and
Rose
v.
Koch
and
Others
was the result.
A
gruelling encounter ensued in which Rose won his verdict, only to have
it set aside for misdirection on appeal-ironically enough
as
a
result of
a
liberal decision by the Supreme Court in the
New
York
Times Case.
The
appeal was a1l;wed in late October
1967
and Rose died two months later
at
the age
of
forty-nine, before he could get the decision of the Minnesota Court
of Appeal tested in the Supreme Court of the
U.S.A.
It
is not clear whether
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