It was not until 1898 that the rule that the House of Lords is absolutely bound by its own judgments was finally established in London, Street Tramways Co., Ltd. v. London County Council. The justification for this rule was stated by Lord Halsbury L.C. in these words: ‘What is that occasional interference with what is perhaps abstract justice as compared with the inconvenience—the disastrous inconvenience—of having each question subject to being reargued and the dealings of man-kind rendered doubtful by reason of different decisions, so that in truth and in fact there would be no real final Court of Appeal?’ It is strange that the Lord Chancellor did not refer to the fact that although the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is, for constitutional reasons, not absolutely bound by its own judgments, nevertheless no ‘disastrous inconvenience’ has followed from this. In practice the Judicial Committee follows its own prior judgments unless they are clearly wrong, but it does so on the ground of reason rather than on that of absolute authority.

In the preface to his memoirs, Casanova outlined his reasons for writing them in French. Having noted that the clarity, precision and grace of the French language are such that a cultivated person cannot help but fall beneath its spell, he went on to mention one further feature:

It is worth observing that among all the living languages in the republic of letters, French is the only one which its presiding judges have sentenced not to enrich itself at the expense of the other languages.

Arguably this is a proud posture for a language to strike, hermetically cocooned within a self-imposed cultural bridewell. Nevertheless, Casanova's observation was, to a degree, an accurate representation of the cultured French of his day and, curiously, is probably truer today that it has ever been.

Care and concern for the elderly have long been regarded by social anthropologists as hallmarks of a civilised community. Unfortunately the care of the elderly frequently presents problems of both a social and legal nature. Some of the difficulties which confront legal practitioners arise from factual situations similar to the following: an aged, widowed father, whose health is deteriorating, asks his adult child to move into his house and look after him for the rest of his days. In return, the father promises orally to leave the house by will to the child or to the child and his or her spouse. The type of problem which can then occur is seen when it is found on the father's death either that he has died intestate, and the estate of which the house forms part has to be divided equally between the child and his or her brothers and sisters, or that he has forgotten to alter his last will. Consequently a will executed perhaps many years earlier provides that the house should be left to some other relative—or even to the legendary cats' home. The child, having assiduously cared for the elderly father, may wish to claim the house and may seek the practitioner's advice.

I Propose to begin with a word or two about the growth of Appeals and then to say something about the present appellate jurisdictions in this country. I suppose, speaking generally, the man who has a decision given against him has a disposition to be discontented with it, and tries to get another decision if he is satisfied that he is in the right. But I should imagine also that in early days the private litigant had a very small say in the matter whether he should, or should not, have the right of appeal. Before the Judiciary and the Executive were distinguishable, when the act of deciding disputes was an act of government, ordinarily performed by the Chieftain or Ruler though perhaps sometimes delegated to a subordinate, in those days, of course, the judge, being also ruler, there were no appeals, and one can only hope that decisions were satisfactory to everyone concerned. Whether the same persons made good rulers and good judges in the days of the Hebrew Judges I do not know; but I do know that I should be very sorry indeed if the two functions, which are of entirely different kinds, were united nowadays. As soon as a ruler began to delegate his function to a subordinate there can be no question that he would from time to time desire to revise the decisions that were arrived at, partly from self-interest, and partly, one may assume, from a sense of justice, knowing that, or thinking that, the decision was wrong and that he could give a better one. And in that kind of way there would gradually emerge a more or less settled system by which decisions would become the subject of review.

On 14 August 1988 the death occurred of Miss Pamela Banyard of Laxenheath. She had been the victim eighteen months previously of a savage and brutal attack for which her assailant was sent to prison for ten years on conviction of attempted murder and robbery. Why was he not convicted of murder? The answer in the words of the Crown Prosecutor: “We cannot prosecute for murder as she died more than a year and a day after the attack.”

“There is no such thing known to our procedure as putting half a prisoner's character in issue and leaving out the other half.” This observation fell from Humphreys J. in delivering the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in R. v. Winfield (1939). The purpose of this article is to suggest that at common law this statement is not borne out by principle or by authority. The effect on the common law where the prisoner elects to go into the witness-box in exercise of the statutory opportunity created by the Criminal Evidence Act, 1898, will also be considered. The type of situation that arises is illustrated by Winfield's Case, where the facts, in brief, were that on a charge of indecent assault, W. put in issue his good character for sexual morality, and the prosecution in cross-examination proved his previous convictions for offences involving dishonesty. The court held that such cross-examination was proper. The question is whether the evidence of the good or bad character of the prisoner must be confined to the trait or traits relevant to the type of crime charged. It will be submitted that the evidence must be so confined. On an indictment for murder, evidence of the good or bad character of the prisoner for honesty will be inadmissible. Not only the crime charged but also the circumstances in which it is alleged to have been committed must be considered. If the murder is committed with a hammer, character for peace and quiet on the one hand and for violence on the other will be admissible, but not if it is a case of slow poisoning.

The practice of “lifting the veil” from the modern company seems at times to be regarded as a sign that corporate personality is a ficition. This view is hardly logical: if the personality of the company were a ficition, there would be no veil to lift, the liability of the company must be the liability of the members, and limited liability must be an illusion. It is precisely because the legal personality of the company is real that special arrangements must be made for lifting the veil of this personality when it conceals the wrongdoing of a member or director. To use a more florid metaphor, when the powerful hoofs of the pantomime horse are used for improper kicking. Back Legs will be stripped of his protective covering, and made to account for his use of an engine of destruction more powerful than his own boots—on exactly the same principle as if he were made to account for his use of a natural horse's to cause damage. It makes no difference whether he sits on the horse's back or stands inside its skin; and it makes no difference to the man's liability for wrongful use of the horse whether the horse has a legal personality or not. (It may of course make a difference to what the victim does about it, since he may have good reasons for choosing to sue the horse rather than the man.)

No account of the history of English legal literature can omit the name of Littleton. Sir Thomas Littleton's treatise on tenures made the family name almost synonymous with the common law itself. But it is not generally known that another member of that illustrious family left unfinished a work which, had it been completed and published, would have earned him a position of importance in the history, not only of English, but of universal jurisprudence. In so far as the will ought to be taken for the deed, perhaps some measure of recognition may justifiably be afforded to his work even after three centuries of oblivion. The author was Edward Littleton (1589–1645), Baron Littleton of Munslow, a direct descendant of Sir Thomas. Educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, he entered the Inner Temple in 1608; and there, like his near-contemporary John Selden (1584–1654), he developed a taste for comparative jurisprudence, legal history, and the study of records. His reputation for learning brought him in 1640 to the seat of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and within a year he was made Lord Keeper. The transition to high office was a personal disaster, since Littleton's nature did not suit him for a position of political delicacy, and his brief tenure of the Seal was scarcely less miserable than that of his predecessor Finch—who had fled to Holland in 1640. Among Littleton's first tasks was to preside over the preliminaries to the proposed impeachments of Finch and the ship-money judges, and the lengthy preparations for the trial of Strafford. Within months he became ill, and from February until August 1641 he absented himself from the House of Lords. The following year, either from fear or high-mindedness, he quit London, following the King to York and thence to Oxford. In his hurried flight he apparently left behind some of his goods and papers in the “Black Lodgings” in the Inner Temple. His health continued to deteriorate, and he died (aged 56) on 27 August 1645.