The Straggler: Law’s Grave Study

Mr. and Mrs. Straggler went down to the local attorney’s office last week to get our wills wrapped up, a thing we have been putting off for far too long. This was just as the Harriet Miers storm was breaking, so that I have been obliged to give some thought to the law at both ends, from the most commonplace personal services to the mighty nation-shaking lucubrations of the Supremes.

In re (see how I get into the spirit of the thing?) matters of law, I am of King Charles’s party: “no lawyer professed,” but still blithe in the confidence that I have sufficient understanding of jurisprudential principles to say intelligent things on the subject—at the very least, to distinguish between obviously good judgments and obviously bad ones. This is probably a delusion, but it is one so widespread that there is very little motivation to rid oneself of it. It is also a delusion much more easily fallen into in these United States, where the fundamental principles of law are helpfully written out in a Constitution brief and clear enough to be read through in a couple of hours. The law in England is more opaque and anonymous, the Constitution unwritten. Not one Englishman in twenty could name the current Lord Chancellor. Throw the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls into the quiz, and you are down to one in a thousand.

About the Author

John Derbyshire

Mr. Derbyshire is a former contributing editor of National Review.

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Mr. and Mrs. Straggler went down to the local attorney’s office last week to get our wills wrapped up, a thing we have been putting off for far too long. This was just as the Harriet Miers storm was breaking, so that I have been obliged to give some thought to the law at both ends, from the most commonplace personal services to the mighty nation-shaking lucubrations of the Supremes.

In re (see how I get into the spirit of the thing?) matters of law, I am of King Charles’s party: “no lawyer professed,” but still blithe in the confidence that I have sufficient understanding of jurisprudential principles to say intelligent things on the subject—at the very least, to distinguish between obviously good judgments and obviously bad ones. This is probably a delusion, but it is one so widespread that there is very little motivation to rid oneself of it. It is also a delusion much more easily fallen into in these United States, where the fundamental principles of law are helpfully written out in a Constitution brief and clear enough to be read through in a couple of hours. The law in England is more opaque and anonymous, the Constitution unwritten. Not one Englishman in twenty could name the current Lord Chancellor. Throw the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls into the quiz, and you are down to one in a thousand.