Twenty Famous Lawyers

John Hostettler

Description

An entertaining diversion for Lawyers and others, Twenty Famous Lawyers focuses on household names and high profile cases. Contains valuable insights into legal ways and means and looks at the challenges of advocacy, persuasion and the finest traditions of the Law.

Sujets

• Droit et juridique
• Legal history

Informations

• Publié par: Waterside Press
• Date de parution: 18 octobre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908162533
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Twenty Famous Lawyers
John Hostettler
Copyright and Publication Details
Twenty Famous Lawyers
John Hostettler
ISBN 978-1-904380-98-6 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-908162-53-3 (Kindle/Epub ebook)
ISBN 978-1-908162-54-0 (Adobe ebook)
Copyright © 2013 This work is the copyright of John Hostettler. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by him in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the publishers to whom all such rights have been assigned worldwide.
Cover design © 2013 Waterside Press. Design by www.gibgob.com .
Main UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QH . Tel: [phone]; [e-mail] ; www.gardners.com
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Cataloguing-In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
Printed by Lightning Source.
e-book Twenty Famous Lawyers is available as an ebook and also to subscribers of Myilibrary, Dawsonera, ebrary, and Ebscohost.
Published 2013 by
Waterside Press
Sherfield Gables
Sherfield on Loddon
Hook, Hampshire
United Kingdom RG27 0JG
Telephone [phone]
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Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
About the Author
John Hostettler is an expert on English legal history and has written several biographies of eminent legal figures. He was a practising solicitor in London for 35 years as well as undertaking political and civil liberties cases in Nigeria, Germany and Aden.
His other books include: Garrow’s Law (2012); Dissenters, Radicals and Blasphemers (2012); Champions of the Rule of Law (2011); Sir William Garrow: His Life Times and Fight for Justice (2010) (with Richard Braby); Thomas Erskine and Trial by Jury (re-issued in 2010); Cesare Beccaria (2010); A History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales (2009); Fighting for Justice: The History and Origins of Adversary Trial (2006); The Criminal Jury Old and New (2004); Famous Cases: Nine Trials that Changed the Law (2002); and Hanging in the Balance: A History of the Abolition of Capital Punishment in Britain (1997) (with Brian P Block).
Preface
This book is made up of short portrayals of a number of outstanding lawyers. Some of them are well-known not only for reasons of their work in the law but also for their activities in other fields. These include John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, all at different times President of the USA, and Marcus Tullius Cicero, arguably Rome’s greatest lawyer and senator. A number of them were, or are, politicians; others were statesmen and, in one instance — William Howe and Abraham Hummel — they were sinister villains who were not only nefarious criminals but shameless with it. However, if being famous means being well-known for significant accomplishments Howe and Hummel certainly were famous.
In some cases, such as Henry Brougham, the Lord Chancellor of England who came within an ace of being Prime Minister, and Sir Edward Carson, known as the “Father of Northern Ireland”, they combined law and politics in their rise to the top of both professions. In all cases mentioned here, where the law was not the primary interest of the person included, his or her legal training and background made a profound contribution to their success.
Some are not only famous but may be considered great whilst others, for various reasons, do not rise to that rank. For instance, I would include Lord Denning in the latter category although I am aware that such a view may well be challenged. He is extremely famous but can we regard as great a man who said he experienced no qualms about people being sentenced to death and was a retentionist who remarked on the utility of capital punishment years after it had been abolished? He also, in later life, strongly condemned people who were subsequently found to be innocent as well as being victims of serious miscarriages of justice. 1
Clarence Darrow was a true humanist and undoubtedly the greatest lawyer in the history of the USA. He acted in defence of the underdog even when the underdogs were wealthy as with the sick murderers, Leopold and Loeb. It is astonishing how frequently he reduced juries, and even judges, to tears. His addresses to juries were often spread over several hours. They were direct and personal, and despite, or because of, that were generally persuasive and successful.
In earlier times Sir Edward Coke and Sir Matthew Hale both combined law and politics and have had a profound influence on the development of this country in the direction of democracy and human rights. Despite personal flaws, both had a deep understanding of, and faith in, the Common Law and the rudiments of the Rule of Law.
It will be noticed that only three women are included in the book. This is because there is no great history of women lawyers. Women were excluded from the legal profession until 1919 when, after their outstanding role in World War I, the ground-breaking Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 2 of that year abolished all existing restrictions upon the admission of women into the professions. Section 1 of the Act deserves repeating. It stated that:
A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post, or from entering or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation, or for admission to any incorporated society (whether incorporated by Royal Charter or otherwise), and a person shall not be exempted by sex or marriage from the liability to serve as a juror.
Helena Kennedy QC, Gareth Peirce and Shami Chakrabarti, who appear here, are each significant civil liberties and human rights lawyers who have also, by their example, greatly enhanced the women’s movement. Their careers show them to be true legal eagles.
Norman Birkett KC was regarded as the leading star at the criminal bar in the 1930s but to his regret he was not a great success as a judge, once outside the advocacy and the hurly-burly of criminal trials. James Fitzjames Stephen was a powerful voice in Victorian England but was too wedded to the importance of retribution in the law and coercion in politics to be a great man. Geoffrey Robertson is a modern human rights lawyer with many important legal successes to his name. He has a great sense of fun and this has brought him success in some rather bizarre cases.
Abraham Lincoln is better known for his abolition of slavery and pursuit of democracy in the USA than for his rather limited work as a lawyer but no one questions that he was a great man who believed in liberty and justice. Jeremy Bentham and Lord Brougham made significant contributions to the development of democracy in the United Kingdom and were steeped in the law whilst bringing about progressive change in other areas.
Sir Edward Marshall Hall was the last of our prominent actor-lawyers with his dramatic histrionics in the presence of juries — in the style of William Howe but without the criminality. Then, as society changed so the public and juries desired to see their lawyers talking instead of declaiming in the loudest possible voice and Marshall Hall’s style went out of fashion.
In utter contrast to Marshall Hall stands Gareth Peirce a human rights solicitor who shuns publicity but whose name has virtually passed into folklore for her tenacious defences of alleged bombers, terrorists and members of minority groups.
Finally, there is Cesare Beccaria, a great man whose influence in making criminal law in many countries more humane is incalculable. He believed that,
In order that every punishment may not be an act of violence, committed by one man or by many against a single individual, it ought to be above all things public, speedy, necessary, the least possible in the given circumstances, proportioned to its crime [and] dictated by the laws.
That message he sent successfully across a Europe riven with secret trials and torture. And, like Beccaria, all the lawyers included here have had a profound effect in their various ways on the lives of others.
Where possible I have included references to key cases as well as turning points and major contributions to legal history in order to provide a thread involving disparate types of men and women in different periods of history and differing cultures. Instead of placing my choice of famous lawyers in alphabetical order I have chosen my own order to mix them up a little and start and end with those I think most suitable in giving a sense of variety. Of course, the reader may pick and choose as he or she wishes.
Some famous lawyers, including Sir William Garrow and Thomas (Lord) Erskine are not included because I have written about them at some length in the recent past. Garrow, in Old Bailey trials, revolutionised the criminal law and was largely responsible for the introduction of adversary trial and human rights for prisoners. Erskine shone in a number of state trials that rocked England and helped keep at bay a virtual reign of terror by a government that feared the spread to this country of the effects of The Terror of the French Revolution and, but for Erskine, very nearly brought it about themselves. 3 Garrow in particular had an important influence on the future of the criminal law and the Constitution of this country as well as having a substantial effect upon adversary trial and the Rule of Law in other lands.
Others are missing because there are so many famous lawyers, since the law impinges on all our lives, so that it is impossible to include a great many of t