Justice changing gear to keep up

Fifty-one years ago no one would have written this book, and, if someone had, no one would have read it. The constitution was not changing; and the judges’ role as the third arm of government would have been of interest, if at all, to lawyers only. It was minimal and marginal. Judges still proclaimed themselves as not creating law but discovering it. Their approach to statutory construction was literal, not purposive; indeed some tended to regard legislation with the disdain of a supercilious examiner for the work of an under-educated schoolboy. The concept of public law had not yet permeated the judicial mind: the courts even held that natural justice (or fairness) had no application to ordinary administrative action, itself seen as an exercise from review of which judges would abstain. Judges did not give press conferences, appear on television, or even write letters to the newspapers; in London they congregated in their Inns; on circuit they were immured in their lodgings.