Law Reform Now' in 21St Century Britain
THE RT HON. THE LORD THOMAS OF CWMGIEDD ‘LAW REFORM NOW’ IN 21ST CENTURY BRITAIN: BREXIT AND BEYOND SIXTH SCARMAN LECTURE GRAY’S INN 26 June 2017 (1) INTRODUCTION 1. It is a singular honour and privilege to have been invited to give the sixth Scarman Lecture, which are given at two yearly intervals. I will attempt to follow in the footsteps of the very distinguished previous lecturers.1 2. I have taken as the first part of the title of this lecture words with which Lord Scarman would have been very familiar: Law Reform Now – the three words which formed the title of the Gerald Gardiner and Andrew Martin book which contained their blueprint for what would become the Law Commission2. As Sir Geoffrey Palmer QC, in the course of tracing the origins and huge success of the Law Commission in his 2015 Scarman Lecture, recalled, it started with a proposition; one they took to be axiomatic: “. that much of our English law is out of date, and some of it shockingly so.”3 They were not wrong. 3. The problem highlighted was that both common law and statute law needed a fundamental overhaul, which was a consequence of their historic and incremental development. Developments over the centuries had not, with some very notable exceptions, been systematised or rationalised. Inconsistencies had arisen, and had been left uncorrected. Obsolete laws remained on the statute book. Although there had been much activity during the zeal of Victorian era (when, for example, the law of marine insurance was codified and much of the 1 I wish to thank Dr John Sorabji, Principal Legal Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice and Master of the Rolls, and James Burke, Legal Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice, for their help in preparing this lecture.
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