Law and the People
The Law of Libel and Slander. By Oswald S. Hickson and P. F. Carter-Ruck. (Faber. 30s.) FOR the people of this island the proceedings of their courts of law provide a never-ending source of wonder and entertainment. Every Sunday about one in six of the entire population invests in that admirable journal, the News of the World, which observes more faithfully than any other newspaper C. P. Scott's ruling about the distinction between fact and comment. With interest that never flags they absorb the week's tidings of exhumed corpses, vindicated doctors, faithless spouses and churchwardens who face grave charges. Each Thursday evening recently they have rushed home to their wire- less sets to hear Mr. Edgar Lustgarten ventriloquise one of the juicier murders of the past. As long as the English tongue is spoken such names as Palmer, Crippen, Rouse and Haig will never perish, and children will learn at their mother's knee the stories of the Tichborne Claimant and Tranby Croft. Here, of course, is the real reason why Communism makes no appeal to the British electorate. The island race recoils in horror from a regime under which People's Courts fritter away their energies in dreary political trials, homicide and all forms of assault are practically never publicised, and there are no society scandals to report. This universal interest in jurisprudence is, however, of a spOrting rather than an expert character. The man on the Clapham omnibus (who, as every schoolboy knows, is the lawyer's equivalent of the leader-writer's man in the street) regards legal practitioners in much the same light as jockeys or speedway riders. He is quite content to observe the race, and does not, as a general rule, feel it necessary to equip himself with a considerable volume of detailed technical knowledge about the training of horses or the manufacture of motor- bicycles. So the British public, for all the attention which it devotes to causes celebres, remains for the most part blissfully ignorant about lawyers and the law. It is extremely rare to come across any volume on a legal subject which is not written for, and comprehensible by, lawyers alone. Messrs. Hickson and Carter-Ruck have achieved something quite exceptional. They have contrived to write a book on libel and slander which both lawyers and laymen should find easy to read. On the one hand they have managed to avoid all unnecessary technicalities. On the other, they have not relapsed into words of one syllable for the tiny tots. In particular they have explained with admirable lucidity the provisions of the Defamation Act, 1952. Their joint work will no doubt obtain a wide circulation in the Temple and Fleet Street and among undergraduates and law students who desire to pass their examinations without undue exertion. But conceivably it may make a wider appeal. It may now be read by a few members of that great sporting public which never tires of watching almost any form of litigation. DINGLE FOOT.
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