Although this action was for breach of contract, it is the inspiration for the main action in last night’s episode of Garrow’s Law (BBC | imdb | wikipedia), a BBC television series inspired by the life and times of 18th century barrister William Garrow. The credits provide
In the late 18th Century William Garrow led a legal revolution
Championing the rights of prisoners in court
These stories are inspired by his life and the Old Bailey archives of the time.
On a BBC blog, Mark Pallis argues that without Garrow “there would be no such thing as a courtroom drama” because he “made a drama out of the trial out of necessity”. And in an article in the Guardian he explains:
… Garrow’s Law is inspired by his life and the cases from the period. … The transcripts of … real Old Bailey cases have been used as inspiration in the series … [but it] is not a biographical documentary. It’s a drama that aims to give viewers a real sense of what life was like in legal London towards the end of the 18th century; to give people a chance to experience the big legal landmarks and the cases that caused a stir at the time. One such case was that of the slave ship Zong, from which [133] … Africans were thrown into the sea, leading to an insurance dispute. The idea that throwing slaves overboard was regarded by the law in the same way as throwing wood, horses or any other “cargo” overboard was shocking enough to serve as a recruitment aid for the anti-slavery movement.
While this case did not involve Garrow, he would doubtless have been aware of it – and we felt we simply wouldn’t be doing justice to the period if we left it out, and so in our drama it is Garrow who tackles it. I like to think that, given Garrow’s personal policy of refusing to defend slavers, and the fact that, later in his life, he oversaw the first prosecution under the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, he would have been happy with the episode.
Although the actual action in Gregson v Gilbert was to enforce the insurance contract, in last night’s episode of Garrow’s Law, the insurance company has honoured the loss to the tune of £4000, but repented of it, and seeks to enlist Garrow as counsel to prosecute the captain of the ship for fraud. Hence, the historical civil action becomes a fictional criminal one, and Garrow is on the side of the angels (or at least not on the side of the devilish slave trade). The television show
‘moved’ the case to the Old Bailey, and made it criminal rather than civil so that it would be part of Garrow’s world. Despite this change, the key issues involved in the two cases are identical.
In the episode, the abilities of the captain were called into question at trial (as they were in the civil case), and Gustavas Vassa gave harrowing evidence of the middle passage (a fictional addition). However, it was not until James Kelsall, former first mate of the Zong, gave evidence that it had rained during the voyage before the slaves were thrown overboard that the trial plainly swung in Garrow’s favour. The jury accepted the evidence; and the captain was duly convicted. This evidence is fictional. However, in the appeal in the civil action, Lord Mansfield held that the ship-owners could not claim insurance on the slaves because the lack of sufficient water demonstrated that the cargo had been badly managed. The point is the same, but the television dramatisation makes it in a far more sensational manner. In any event, the case graphically demonstrated the ill-treatment of slaves being transported from Africa to the Americas, and greatly contributed to the abolition movement. Indeed, at the end of the episode, Garrow expresses to Vassa the “hope the country will make its own verdict” on slavery. It soon would, and not before time.
The trial scenes are powerful television, bringing home the appalling human misery behind the dry commercial realities of an insurance contract. As for Turner’s painting:
the critic John Ruskin, the first owner of Slave Ship, wrote, “If I were reduced to rest Turner’s immortality upon any single work, I should choose this.”
Warning: plot spoilers When the movie begins, our hero, Shrek, is suffering a classic mid-life crisis; he is dissatisfied with married life, and pining for the old days, when he was a terrifying ogre rather than a domesticated tourist attraction. Rumpelstiltskin, the evil and manipulative magic deal-maker, offers Shrek the opportunity to spend a day as a real ogre again, in return for another day from Shrek’s childhood. The YouTube clip at the top left is the scene in which Rumpelstiltskin cajoles Shrek into agreeing. Having signed on the dotted line, Shrek is transported into an alternate reality. At first, he enjoys being fearsome one again. But the catch – and there’s always a catch – is that the day Rumpelstiltskin takes is the day of Shrek’s birth. This means that Shrek was not there to rescue Princess Fiona in the first movie; and her desperate parents, King Harold and Queen Lillian, turned to Rumpelstiltskin, and signed over the kingdom of Far Far Away to him in return for having all of their problems disappear. They disappeared, and the kingdom is now subject to Rumpelstiltskin’s tyrannical rule. It is a world where ogres are hunted criminals and Fiona leads the resistance; and when Shrek’s day as a frightening ogre is over, it will all be as if he had never existed. However, Donkey reveals to Shrek a sneakily-hidden exit clause in his contract with Rumpelstiltskin: if Shrek receives “True Love’s First Kiss”, the contract will be rendered null and void. So, the third act of the movie turns on Shrek’s efforts to get Fiona to fall in love with him and kiss him before the morning.
This time last year, I found myself explaining to concerned parents at the Higher Options Fair that law students’ small lecture load does not necessarily mean a small work load. Plus ça change. My colleagues have found themselves explaining much the same thing today at this year’s event. Briefly, law students should spend considerable amounts of time on independent reading, developing research skills (how to find what is relevant) and honing discernment and judgment (how to decide what to use of what is read) – these are all important practice skills which they learn in college.
In the US, the Socratic Method is widely used in Law Schools to teach these skills, and it is one of the driving dramatic forces in The Paper Chase, a book/movie/tv series on which I have already commented here and here. Its great character was John Houseman’s inconic Contracts Professor, Charles Kingsfield – the clip below is the first time we meet him in the tv series:
The case being discussed in the clip is Hawkins v McGee 84 N.H. 114, 146 A. 641 (Supreme Court of New Hampshire, 1929), and Kingsfield’s victim is James T Hart, the confused first year law student, played by Timothy Bottoms, who is the central character in the series. But even though the series is nominally about Hart, as Tim Zinnecker recently commented on The Faculty Lounge, Houseman’s Kingsfield steals the show in every scene in which he appears. Timothy Burke on Easily Distracted acknowledged that calling students up on the carpet in an imperious Professor Kingsfield fashion is a beautiful style of teaching when done well (though he preferred the approach of his high school English teacher, who taught with passion). Kingsfield’s literary creator, the author John Jay Osborn Jr, noted A Change in Professor Kingsfield–and His Creator: over the course of book/movie/tv series, he grew more complicated. Todd J. Zywicki on the Volokh Conspiracy posed the question Who Was the Basis for Professor Kingsfield?, and The Faculty Lounge adds a few more candidates to the list. Moreover, in a tribute to the character’s enduring appeal, Michael Vitiello has written a full law review piece about him: “Professor Kingsfield: The Most Misunderstood Character in Literature” 33 Hofstra Law Review 955 (2005) (pdf). Indeed, in what was no doubt an intentional reference, the 2002 movie The Socratic Method (imdb), about first year law students in a fictional California law school, features a Professor Houseman.
My continuing mission is to become like Kingsfield every day. I teach Contract. That’s a start.
The United Kingdom’s new Supreme Court will open its doors for business on October 1, with the first inbuilt facilities in Britain for broadcasting in court. … Broadcasting and internet arrangements are still to be devised but the three courts (two for the Supreme Court, one for the judicial committee of the Privy Council) can be filmed, a first in England and Wales.
As the BBC story on the completion of the refurbishment emphasises, the “decision to televise events from inside the court’s three chambers is a first for England and Wales”. And the Guardianquotes Jenny Rowe, the Court’s Chief Executive as saying that they are “in advanced discussions with broadcasters about the material they will want to use … If broadcasters wish to show it we will make it available”.
I think that it is a splendid idea. As the Canadian blawgs Slaw and the Court point out, since February 2009, the Supreme Court of Canada has provided live streaming of oral arguments and judges’ questions in authorized cases. The whole experiment is working well, and doing the same in the UK is an excellent development. When will the Irish Supreme Court follow suit? Will it ever catch on here? It can only help to promote public confidence in the administration of justice at the highest level. After all, not only would justice be done, it would be seen to be done.
In his review essay on Star Trek: The Exhibition [link], Edward Rothstein [wikipedia] points out a number of anachronisms and anamolies, most stemming from the original television series and its spin-offs. He notes that mixing reality and pop culture may do neither justice. Points taken. (I saw this exhibition in San Diego). For those of us who grew up on ST: TOS and its offspring and who are fond of the Star Trek mythos, however, this show doesn’t represent the reality or history of space flight. But that, as I understand it, isn’t really the point of Star Trek: The Exhibition. The point is to examine the effect of the show on the generations who have watched and grown up with the show, and the effect of those viewers on Star Trek. See also the program (available on DVD) How William Shatner Changed the World [imdb], based on his book I’m Working On That: A Trek From Science Fiction To Science Fact (2004) [Amazon].
Can one exhibition capture all of that involvement and energy? Probably not. Many people have written books attempting to measure these effects. But this particular exhibition at least allows some of us to examine the evidence.
After what has seemed to most Contracts professors an unconscionably long time, the TV series The Paper Chase has finally come out on video. Technically, it's called "season one" although there was only one season on the original CBS program in 1978-79. Three additional seasons were run on Showtime starting in 1983, which allowed the protagonist, "Mr. Hart," to graduate Harvard in only four years.
On the Amazon web site (linked above) you can see a riveting clip dealing with (among other things) whether one who performs the service requested by a reward offer can recover if he was unaware of the reward. The growing tension among the students who offer different answers is . . . palpable.
Posted elsewhere (some of my recent posterous posts)
My posterous site is a companion to this blog: anything that catches my eye on the wild wild web that's too long for twitter but too short for a normal post here will (probably - eventually) end up over there.
I have on this blog regularly discussed the extent to which offensive speech can be restricted. For example, there are many (many) posts on this blog on censorship and blasphemy. Furthermore, I have referred to the censorship of Guillaume Apollinaire (here and here), Carolina Gustavsson, Aldous Huxley, DH Lawrence (here, here and here), James Joyce, John Latham, Robert Mapplethorpe and Vladimir Nabokov. Moreover, I have analysed the kinds of reasons why this kind of speech should not be censored: free speech means freedom for the thought we hate, even that of David Irving (eg, here, here, here, and here), Jean-Marie le Pen, or Kevin Myers, and even – especially! – in multi-cultural societies, especially – especially!! – online.
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