Ideablawg Weekly Connections: From Twibel to Chaucer

This week, I surfed the Internet and did some reading the old-fashioned way – nothing like holding and having a book - so let’s look at the week in review:

1.   Google Glasses are being talked about and well they should! As the next step in computer/human interface, these glasses would really come in useful in the courtroom when you need to bring up that name of a case – you know that name! Google Glasses could tell you that. Of course, Google Glasses can also keep the lawyers busy as in the case of the California woman, who was charged with distracted driving while wearing her special specs. The California law makes it illegal to “drive a motor vehicle if a television receiver, a video monitor, or a television or video screen, or any other similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast or video signal that produces entertainment or business applications, is operating” and, as she was also speeding at the time, a puzzled police officer pulled her and her Glasses over. The Judge, however, acquitted the feckless (not specless) woman, as there was no evidence the Google Glasses were operating at the time of the incident. My only question is: how could you ever prove that? Maybe the police need some new technology? Can that laser catch speeders and readers?

2. Peter Ackroyd, a British writer, historian and biographer, has written numerous fiction and non-fiction books, mostly about his beloved London. I have read a number of his books, most notably London Under, about what is found under the city – you’d be surprised what’s there - and The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, a fictionalized backgrounder to the good Doctor. I have recently read a raft of his biographies; some from his brief lives series, including Turner, Poe, Newton, and Chaucer. The Chaucer bio was fascinating as Geoffrey Chaucer was a minor Court official, who really only wrote as a side career. He also had some legal training and was used by the Kings (he survived more than one) for delicate diplomatic missions to France and Italy. Not only does Ackroyd give us non-fictional accounts but he usually ties these peregrinations to a fiction book as well. For instance, he did a marvelous re-working (or translation) of The Canterbury Tales and then re-worked them even more to write Clerkenwell Tales. I also recently read his fascinating biography on Charles Dickens. By the way, watch for the Dickens movie to be released with Ralph Fiennes as the venerable, and love-struck (read the book to see why – the movie is called The Invisible Woman) author. Of course, Dickens did work as a law clerk in Chancery Court when he was young and his novel, Bleak House, brings his past experience to life (or death as we are talking wills) with a comedic flare that is both cynical and heartwarming. I have written a couple of blogs on Dickens in the past here and here

3. Back to law and the Internet – this time law and the Smartphone as Courtney Love successfully defends against a defamation case caused by her tweeting that her attorney, in her Kurt Cobain estate case, was “bought off” not to represent her.  Apparently, the tweet was supposed to be “private” and the jurors agreed. A “private” tweet therefore was not considered “twibel,” which is a libelous tweet of course. Not only is this the first twibel case but, I think also the next word to make it as the Oxford Dictionary Word! Selfies is so last month!

4. I have also been reading some law and imagery articles and I have been particularly struck with articles written by Peter Goodrich, who is the Director of the Law and Humanities program at the Cordozo School of Law. His writing is witty, vivacious, and thought provoking. Try reading his article on Specters of Law: Why the History of the Legal Spectacle Has Not Been Written, which speaks of the visible and the not so visible legal tradition that lawyers have constructed. 

Charles Dickens Is On The Side Of Justice

I would be remiss, if I did not recognize the 200^th birthday of Charles Dickens and his characterization or, more accurately, “caricature-ization” of law and justice.

In Great Expectations, Pip, the narrator of the book, defines himself through the backdrop of English law. As a child, Pip imagines a spine-chilling scene of officers of the law surreptitiously lying in wait to take him before the Assizes to avenge the bloody nose and black eye he gave a “pale young gentleman” after a fair fight.

The possibility of being brought to “justice” caused Pip to act as a stereotypical guilty man: obliterating all traces of the physical evidence against him and concocting a false explanation for the injury to his hand. Of course his furtive actions were unnecessary as only Pip’s conscious showed any taste for vengeance: in reality, the incident was a normal every day school-yard fisticuff. The presence of guilt, in this instance, was unnoticed and unimportant.

But the issue of guilt or innocence becomes important later, when a murder trial, detailed in a local newspaper, is tried by an adolescent Pip and various townspeople while drinking at the local bar. “Guilty as charged” is the general consensus except for the stranger, clearly a foreigner, who reminds the blood-thirsty ersatz jury of the presumption of innocence.

The newspaper has merely sketched the prosecutor’s evidence without the benefit of cross-examination, the man points out, a central principle in the adversarial system and a cornerstone of a fair trial. Furthermore, the accused had not as yet testified and was therefore unheard in his defence. Any jury, enthused the gentleman, holding true to their oath, would not, could not, pronounce the unfortunate prisoner guilty at such an early juncture of the case. The townspeople, being duly chastised, having seen the error of their enthusiasm, humbly retract their feelings of guilt. In the same moment, the stranger, the Londoner, is revealed as a lawyer and the bearer of Great Expectations.

I have already named Dickens’s Bleak House, in a previous posting, a must read for lawyers or anyone interested in the law for the dark and dreary atmosphere of the novel arising from the impenetrable fog of the court of Chancery. Yet, so many of Dickens’s books read like a first year law case summary as exemplified by these two, of many, legal passages found in Great Expectations.

In fact, let us return to Great Expectations in mid-scene as Pip watches Mr. Jaggers, the London lawyer from the previous passage and now his Guardian, “going at it” in the Police or Magistrate Courts in London. As I could not possibly summarize this delicious passage with any dexterity, I quote it as follows:

We dived into the City, and came up in a crowded police-court, where a blood-relation (in the murderous sense) of the deceased, with the fanciful taste in brooches, was standing at the bar, uncomfortably chewing something; while my guardian had a woman under examination or cross-examination,—I don't know which,—and was striking her, and the bench, and everybody present, with awe. If anybody, of whatsoever degree, said a word that he didn't approve of, he instantly required to have it "taken down." If anybody wouldn't make an admission, he said, "I'll have it out of you!" and if anybody made an admission, he said, "Now I have got you!" The magistrates shivered under a single bite of his finger. Thieves and thief-takers hung in dread rapture on his words, and shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned in their direction. Which side he was on I couldn't make out, for he seemed to me to be grinding the whole place in a mill; I only know that when I stole out on tiptoe, he was not on the side of the bench; for, he was making the legs of the old gentleman who presided, quite convulsive under the table, by his denunciations of his conduct as the representative of British law and justice in that chair that day.

It is difficult, after reading this passage, to also "make out" on which side Charles Dickens was on: for English justice or against. Certainly, Dickens own personal experience with law was less than salutary as his family bore the burden and shame of debtors’ prison, a thoroughly Dickensian institution for the working poor of England who were unable to meet their financial obligations.

His keen insight into lawyers’ “going at it” may have also come from his experience of working as a clerk in a law office and as a court reporter at the Doctors’ Commons. The Doctors’ Commons was “a college, "or common house" of doctors of law, for the study and practice of the civil law.” Certainly, his fictional accounts of the inequities found in law and in society influenced the reformation of England’s harsh child labour laws, unveiled the intolerable conditions in the poor houses, and revealed the general imbalances between the working poor and the comfortable working class: all by-products of the Industrial Revolution.

This passion for fairness and justice was handed down to Dickens' son, Henry Fielding Dickens, who went on to become a brilliant barrister and Judge. Indeed, Henry’s son was also a successful barrister. All came full circle with Dickens’s great grand-daughter, Monica Dickens, who was a best selling novelist in the 40’s and 50’s, and founded the first Massachusetts branch of the Samaritans, a charitable organization providing support and assistance for those contemplating suicide.

All of this, however, will not stop me from ending this blog with another Dickens law quote from Oliver Twist, when Mr. Bumble, faced with the perfidy of his wife and the conclusion he too was in on the deception, states:

If the law supposes that,' said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, 'the law is a ass—a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.' Laying great stress on the repetition of these two words, Mr. Bumble fixed his hat on very tight, and putting his hands in his pockets, followed his helpmate downstairs.

Required Reading For the Criminal Lawyer

The following five classic books should be required reading for any criminal lawyer or anyone simply interested in understanding the reason behind fundamental criminal law principles:

1. Rethinking Criminal Law by George P. Fletcher. Although written in 1978, this book by George P. Fletcher, a prolific and thoughtful legal scholar and now Chair of Jurisprudence at Columbia Law School, is still a relevant and fascinating journey through the landscape of criminal theory. From his first chapter entitled The Topology of Theft to his last on The Theory of Justification and Excuse, Fletcher covers the wide and varied spectrum of criminal offences and defences through elegant, yet colourful, language. Throughout, he questions the reasons behind traditional common law precepts and lends a decidedly American dimension to criminal law principles.


2. Punishment and Responsibility by H.L.A. Hart. What Fletcher is to American criminal jurisprudence, Hart, who was a professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University, is to English criminal law, and then some. Hart, a legal positivist, expounded his legal philosophy in a series of books written in the sixties, his most famous being The Concept of Law in 1961. It is, however, his volume of essays in legal philosophy compiled in Punishment and Responsibility from 1968, which I have read and re-read since my first days in law school. Hart is definitely not for the “faint-hearted” as he extends and refines the theories of John Austin and Jeremy Bentham. Both John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, also “giants” of legal philosophy, were past students of Hart’s and greatly influenced by him. Indeed, the “Hart-Dworkin” debate on the efficacy of legal positivism is legend in the annals of legal philosophy.


3. The Limits of the Criminal Sanction by Herbert Packer. Another American legal scholar, Packer coined the present-day models of criminal process: the “crime-control” model, which emphasizes the efficient apprehension and punishment of criminals in order to protect the law-abiding citizen and the “due process” model, which protects the rights of the accused through a fair and just criminal process. In this 1968 book, Packer extends his models and discusses the role of punishment or sanction in our criminal law. He speaks of both traditional modes of sanctioning and the ability for these methods to deter crime. As well, he offers alternative methods. Interesting to note that some 40 years later, we are still struggling with the same issues.


4. Narrative, Violence, and the Law: The Essays of Robert Cover. Although not a complete book written by Robert Cover, but a compilation of his works, the essays found within the covers are some of most mind-bending legal works I have read. Robert Cover, whom I discussed in a previous posting, was, in his short lifetime, a profoundly creative legal thinker, whose writings force the reader to think of traditional issues in a startling new way. I highly recommend Cover’s essay entitled Violence and the Word.


5. Criminal Law: The Meaning of Guilt: Strict Liability, Working Paper No. 2 1974, Limits of Criminal Law: Obscenity: A Test Case, Working Paper No. 10, 1975, Criminal Responsibility for Group Action, Working Paper No. 16, 1976 – all by the LRCC. In the early to mid-1970s, Antonio Lamer, who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, was the Vice-Chairman and then Chairman of the Law Reform Commission of Canada (LRCC). During his sojourn as head of the organization, the LRCC produced a number of excellent Working Papers on criminal law generally but more specifically, on the issue of criminal liability. Three, in particular stand out, and are a must read for anyone interested in the fault element of crime or criminal intention. They are written in a very clear manner as they were intended for public consumption. The actual 1976 Parlimentary Report is entitled Our Criminal Law.

Shakespeare's Courts And The Promise To Marry

Today let's travel back some three hundred years from Dickens to Shakespeare. Shakespeare would undoubtedly be familiar with the Prerogative Court and the Consistory Court of the 1500s. Prerogative Court was a Church Court in which the powers and privileges of the sovereign were exercised. The Prerogative Court of Canterbury handled the probate of Wills for the south of England and Wales. This court was eventually subsumed into the Court of Probate in 1858. You can find some of these Wills at the National Archive website such as Jane Austen’s Will from 1817.

The Consistory Court of London was another Church Court involved in marital issues including disagreements over estates. In "The Lodger Shakespeare" by Charles Nicholl, Shakespeare's life is illuminated not through his plays but through his personal relationships while he lived in London. Nicholl examines those around Shakespeare: his landlord and landlady as well as those he interacted with on a daily basis. Nicholl describes Shakespeare witnessing or actually presiding over his landlady's daughter's plight ceremony or betrothing. According to Nicholl, such a ceremony was a recognized form of marriage occurring before the religious ceremony. This betrothing had the force and effect of a signed contract and an aggrieved party could sue on the basis of a breach of this plight troth.

These contracts were the precursor to the common law marriages recognized by the courts even today. Nicholl discussed the difference between the de futuro marriage (a future agreement) contract and the de praesenti (a present marriage contract). The de futuro contract is only binding upon consummation of the marriage, while the de praesenti is binding immediately. Indeed, Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure revolves around such a ceremony and contract with a delightful “play” on the sexual requirements to make such a contract enforceable.

In Canada there is no right to sue on a breach of a promise to marry. However, there may be an action to return an engagement ring if an engagement is broken. In D’Andrea v. Schmidt, a 2005 Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench case, the defendant Kim Schmidt, who was the wearer of the ring, argued that such a lawsuit was based on an “anachronistic law” which discriminated against women and perpetuated stereotypes contrary to s.15 of the Charter. Such a cause of action, she argued, treated women like chattels and was not within the spirit of societal values. Needless to say, this argument did not have the “ring” of truth as the Court found a lawsuit for the return of gifts given in promise of marriage could be brought by either sex.

In McManus v. McCarthy there was a valid marriage but the husband wanted the return of the engagement ring after the marital breakdown. Madame Justice Kenny ordered the return of the ring as it was found to be a conditional gift only. No surprise as this marriage lasted 9 days and occurred after 4 prior engagements!

Betrothals do matter, however, when it comes to immigration. Refugee applications in Canada can be based upon the coercive effects of arranged marriages in foreign countries such as Ghana. See this link for a case on point. Such “marriages” can start at a very early age with a betrothal and thus an expectation of marriage at a much later date. This situation is a contract de futuro where the woman, when old enough to appreciate the situation, does not consent. It appears these claimants are not typically granted refugee status.

Shakespeare was therefore very much aware of the necessity for the rule of law as in his famous line from Henry VI suggests:"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." This line was not written to incite against the law or rail against lawyers, but was written to underscore the need society has for the rule of law, without which, anarchy reigns.

Bleak House And The Court of Chancery

My legally minded book choice to re-read this holiday break is Bleak House by Charles Dickens. In Bleak House, the courts are more than a backdrop to the story but the elemental building blocks of the story’s structure. The opening chapter tells all as the Court of Chancery obscures characters in its process and procedure. The Court is thus cast as the arch-nemesis of all.

Dickens published Bleak House in installments in 1852 to 1853. The novel reflects the English Court of Chancery as it was in the 1800s. This was a Court of Equity, originally the court of redress for those who could not find legal remedies in the common law system. An English equivalent to the American Judge Judy. The Lord High Chancellor created the court in the 1500s after years of serving as the King’s delegate in deciding citizens’ petitions to the King. See the English National Archives website for a review of ancient petitions from the time of Henry III to James I. Shakespeare’s Will is also available on this website. Also peruse Chancery decisions online from 1606.

The rule of law in Chancery was that of equity and fairness, not of the rule of law. As depicted in the novel, by the time of Bleak House the Chancery Court was awash in deadlock (a pun on Bleak House) and inequities. Cases before that court took many years to come to fruition and, as in Bleak House, more often than naught would come to an ignominious end as lawyers’ fees dissipated whatever ‘equity’ remained in the case.

Presently, the Court of Chancery is part of the English High Court of Justice. There are still Chancery courts found in some jurisdictions of the United States, such as Delaware. So too Canada had a Court of Chancery, which merged with common law courts in 1881.

A prime example of an English Chancery Court decision can be found in Fletcher v. Fletcher from 1844. Jacob Fletcher filed the lawsuit as the “natural” or illegitimate son of the testator, Ellis Fletcher, for the large sum of 60,000 pounds. Ellis died ten years earlier but the document establishing this claim was not uncovered until much later. Indeed, the claim was found wrapped up in a “brown paper parcel” and in the personal papers of the deceased. The defendants in the suit are the “infant children” of the deceased and supposedly legitimate. The Vice-Chancellor, however, finds in favour of Jacob.

Although the case does not have the drama of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, it does have the elements of intrigue and heartbreak. Every lawsuit is a story and a narrative of the past. From law to literature as a reported decision comes to life in the pages of Bleak House!

Another alternative is to watch the outstanding rendition of Bleak House as presented by PBS on Masterpiece Theatre. Canadian actress, Gillian Anderson, is sublime in her role as Lady Dedlock. The direction and cinematography is uniquely modern, yet holds true to the period piece genre.