Lord Denning, the English appellate judge,
furnished many examples of
judgments with an arresting opening, which were typically written in prose of a
beguiling and compelling simplicity. In Beswick v Beswick
his judgment
commences “Old Peter Beswick was a coal merchant in Eccles, Lancashire.
He had no business premises. All he had was a lorry, scales and weights”.
279
Hinz v Berry welcomed and
beckoned the reader with the delights of nature:
“It happened on April 19, 1964. It was bluebell time in Kent”.
280
Miller v
Jackson opened by extolling the joys of cricket and its place in village life: “In
summertime village cricket is the delight of everyone. Nearly every village has
its own cricket field where the young men play and the old men watch”.
281
There are, however, reasons to exercise caution when commencing a text in
this way. First, one of the reasons that so many articles in newspapers are not
clearly written is that the effort to grab the reader’s attention distorts the natural
structure of the text. Second, a judgment is not written to grab a reader’s
attention with gimmickry. It is a serious attempt to explain why a case was
decided as it was.
There remains the question of whether attention grabbing lines are a good way
to commence a piece of legal writing such as a textbook or an article. A
suggested answer is to use the device but with extreme care.
Individual Styles
Style “is a very individual matter” and there is no requirement to conform to
any particular style.
282
It depends on variable factors such as education and
personality.
283
Consequently, style varies among legal writers. There is much
comment on this concerning judges. For example, there is the “commanding
and colourful style of Viscound Simonds” and “the limpid simplicity and
classical clarity that conceals profundity” possessed by Justice Fullagar.
284
Given the variety of possible literary styles, attempts have been made to
classify judges according to their style. There are, however, two problems with
this. First, despite numerous attempts made to categorise judges there is no
___________________
279
Beswick v Beswick [1966] Ch 538, 549, cited in Kirby (1990) p 696
and Kirby (1983). This was originally said in an interview by H Young in
Talking Law, BBC 16 September 1979.
280
Hinz v Berry [1070] 2 QB 40, 42
281
Miller v Jackson [1977] QB 966, 976 (The Cricket Case)
282
Gibbs (1993) p 498
283
Kirby (1990) p 705
284
Kitto (1992) p 796
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