Seventy years ago there appeared in Britain a series of newspaper articles, which in the autumn of the year were published in book form. To this book the author, perhaps drawing on his earlier career as a journalist, gave a headline-catching title: The New Despotism. In the Richter scale of world events this publication was not, as even the most introverted lawyer would have to acknowledge, the most memorable event of 1929. But on the more specialised Richter scale which measures movements in the landscape of constitutional and administrative law, and standards of judicial conduct, a noticeable tremor was registered. For the author of The New Despotism was Lord Hewart of Bury, who held office as Lord Chief Justice of England, and the book was a coruscating attack on what he pejoratively called the bureaucracy, the great departments of state, whom Hewart accused of acquiring and exercising legislative and administrative powers in a manner which circumvented Parliament, excluded judicial control through the ordinary courts and undermined the rule of law.