Features

Advocacy and the vulnerable training: a progress report

A skill that can be taught: Bar now sets standard of excellence in efforts to improve the questioning of the vulnerable. By Lynda Gibbs, Kama Melly QC and HHJ Simon Drew QC

Interview: Christopher Vajda

As the Prime Minister’s Brexit dealings are awaited, Anthony Inglese meets UK judge to Europe’s top court, Christopher Vajda, who reflects on his journey to the ECJ and six years of judging EU-style

Why dual qualify? International snapshots

Contemplating a border leap? Whether for Brexit, competitive or personal reasons, Counsel asks a panel of dual-qualifieds to share their know-how

‘Tis the season to shop at Aldi? Seán Jones QC and Professor Dominic Regan present a shrewd seasonal selection... plus the best party wine, an oenophile’s essential stocking filler and why big wine deserves big glasses

Get social media savvy

What’s all the fuss about? Should you get involved? And if so, how? Social media sage Felicity McMahon explains when it’s good to tweet

Christmas events at a glance

Christmas at Temple Church

Wednesday 5 December, 6.00pm Christmas Carol Service
Sung by the Bar Choral Society. Admission: free.

Thursday 6 December, 6.00pm Temple Church Carol Service
Sung by the Temple Church Choir. Tickets not required.

Monday 10 - Friday 14 December, Temple Winter Festival

Monday 10 December, 7.30pm Temple Church Choir Concert
Tickets required. To book: www.templemusic.org

Wednesday 12 December, 1.00pm Organ Recital
Roger Sayer, organ. Admission: free.

Sunday 16 December, 11.15am Temple Church Carol Service
Same service will be sung on Thursday 6 December and Monday 17 December. Tickets required for Sunday service only.

Monday 17 December, 6.00pm Temple Church Carol Service
Sung by the Temple Church Choir. Tickets not required.

Tuesday 18 December, 6.00pm Concert: Celebrate Christmas With Carols
Supporting the work of Advocate (formerly the Bar Pro Bono Unit) and LawWorks. Tickets required. To book, see here.

Wednesday 19 December, 5.30pm Christmas Carol Sing-Along
Tickets not required. Requests will be taken. This will replace the usual Wednesday Evensong service.

Monday 24 December, 11.15pm Christmas Eve: Midnight Choral Communion

Tuesday 25 December, 11.15am Christmas Day: Choral Mattins

Liverpool Lawyers’ Carol Service

Monday 17 December, 6.00pm Liverpool Parish Church, 5 Old Churchyard, L2 8GW.
Free, all welcome. Featuring performances by the Formby Brass Band. Mince pies and mulled wine available after the service.

Gray’s Inn Carols and Miscellany

Sunday 16 December, 3.00pm to 6.30pm Gray’s Inn Carol Service
Gray’s Inn Chapel, The Annual Service of Nine Lessons and Carols for Choir and Congregation. To book for tea after the service, please email Michelle.Clark@graysinn.org.uk

Wednesday 12 December, Members of Gray’s Inn Miscellany present this year’s show Gray’s In Space.
Location: Hall. Drinks: 6.45pm. Performance: 7.15pm. Supper: 9.15pm.
Tickets at £45 per person from www.graysinn.org.uk

Inner Temple Children’s Christmas Tea & Drama Society

Sunday 16 December, 3.30pm Children’s Christmas Tea with Father Christmas following a Nativity Play in the Temple Church.
Book member tickets for the tea and check full details of nativity play timing at www.innertemple.org.uk/events

Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 December, Drama Society Performance
More details at www.innertemple.org.uk/events

Lincoln’s Inn Carols

Tuesday 4 December, 5pm-6pm Midweek Carol Service

Sunday 9 December, 11.30am-1.30pm Family Carol Service

Middle Temple’s Christmas Revels

Thursday 13 December and Friday 14 December, 6.30pm Comedy revue of sketches and songs staged on two nights every December in Hall.
Tickets from: www.middletemple.org.uk

Big Brother Watch & Others v The UK

Enormous, complicated and (inevitably) misreported – the ECtHR judgment following the Snowden revelations warrants further scrutiny. By Oliver Sanders QC and Dominic Ruck Keene

Gender recognition, self-ID and next steps

Julian Norman surveys the debate generated by the government consultation on gender self-identification, the impact on women’s sex-based rights and why legal clarity will be crucial

Book review: Blind Defence

Blind Defence
Author: John Fairfax
Publisher: Little, Brown (2018)
ISBN: 9781408708750

This is a long book – more than 300 pages – and having invested time in reading it, one is predisposed to want this to be well spent. The protagonist rivals Morse, Tennison or Sherlock in having unexpected characteristics that draws you in. A defence barrister, who has himself served a term of imprisonment, he presents as a flawed hero and is the underdog the reader is silently rooting for. Following in the best traditions of crime drama, clues, the characters’ background and histories are revealed bit by bit to form a veritable jigsaw.

Optioned for television, it is easy to see how this beautifully written book by William Brodrick (who practised as a barrister before writing full time; Fairfax is his pen name), would transfer to screen sympathetically. There is vivid imagery to exploit; houseboats, East End gangsters, organised-crime lords, dark alleys, sudden deaths and fishermen all feature. With political strands being interwoven into the topic of law, different social classes, and an unspoken commentary thereof featuring, it ticked all the boxes one has come to expect with this type of novel.

However, it also appeared to be something of a Harry Potter novel; the multiple strands and little details – which one felt sure should amount to a startling revelation – are never fully explored. I would not be surprised that this second book featuring the double act of De Vere (solicitor) and Benson (counsel), will be followed by a third, and possibly more books, with additional disclosures. Ultimately, I was left slightly annoyed and cheated that some of the detail of the clever plot was not well explained. I still do not understand the significance of an infamous cigarette butt (on which much turns inexplicably), despite going back to see if I have missed something! That said, when the next book comes out, will I read it? Just try and stop me. And when this is on television, I may shout at the screen occasionally – but I will enjoy doing so.

Reviewer: Melissa Coutinho

Book review: Law and the Whirligig of Time

Law and the Whirligig of Time

Author: Sir Stephen Sedley
Publisher: Hart Publishing
ISBN: 9781509917099

This is a rich collection of historical essays, learned articles, speeches and potted biographies. It is only at the end that we discover that as a young law student, the author/former Lord Justice of Appeal was the folk music critic for Tribune and once played an impromptu session with Bob Dylan at the Troubadour. It is worth noting this, when one reads forward, that at least one judge was never out of touch with the zeitgeist.

‘The whirligigs of time’ is the phrase from Twelfth Night appropriately first uttered in an Inn of Court. In a lecture at Edinburgh Sir Stephen pointed out the speed at which our notion of human rights has changed, eg how have we gone in a generation from seeing same gender sex as a sin to something protected by the human right of privacy? ‘It is the revenge which time is for ever taking on things we imagine to be timeless’.

Having been a pioneer of modern administrative law while at the Bar and having spent 19 years on the bench, the pieces inevitably dwell on how the law has changed and on how judges fit into the constitutional arrangement. He deals with the media-fed perception that judges are ‘unaccountable’. Here as elsewhere he points his guns towards the mischief caused by the illiberal parts of the media – one of Sir Stephen’s attributes being an encyclopaedic memory of all the silly things which have been printed over the years. ‘I do not imagine that the unelected-and-unaccountable critics want judges who have to be voted in or can be voted out.’ A judge who can be removed by government or the electorate ‘lacks the central attribute of judicial office, independence’.

The ‘People’ section includes his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entries on Lords Scarman, Bingham and Diplock, and his obituary of Lord Denning. Magisterial, frank and unafraid to debunk some much-loved misconceptions about some of these men, they are excellent introductions to some important legal lives. Almost the last passage in the book is his advice to Oxford law students: ‘Possibly the hardest thing to achieve in legal practice is losing a case well... I mean leaving court knowing that you couldn’t have done more.’

Perhaps in the future we shall hear something of those students. Meanwhile we look forward to hearing more, in his ostensible retirement, from Sir Stephen.

Reviewer: David Wurtzel

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