The Number Devil

"I agree that this appeal should be allowed although the legal route which has led me to this conclusion is not at all points identical with that traversed by the Master of the Rolls. After all, that is the beauty of the common law; it is a maze and not a motorway."

Diplock LJ said that in Morris v C W Martin & Sons. I found the quote in one of my Contract casebooks. It has been put in just before the sample opinion answers at the back and I think it is supposed to offer comfort to distressed law students who will inevitably read the sample answer and panic because they did not address the issues in exactly the same order or the same way. I was reading it because I had a Contract test last night, which didn't go as well as I had hoped. I will try harder, as Boxer always said.

As an aside, I should point out that the Master of the Rolls at the time of Morris was Lord Denning, or Denning LJ as he was then. Lord Denning's legal reasoning is well known for its creativity, and so it's interesting that Lord Diplock chooses to demonstrate the maze-like nature of the common law by contrasting his approach with Denning's, when the point could perhaps have been better made if it had been by contrast with another less, well, bold, member of the judiciary.

That all said, I have massive respect for Lord Denning. Probably like a lot of other Law students, he is my favourite judge. His judgments are so readable due to the way he characterises the facts of each case, most notably in Miller v Jackson ("In the summertime, village cricket is the delight of everyone... [the judge] has issued an injunction to stop them [from playing cricket]. He has done it at the instance of a newcomer who is no lover of cricket.") He also had a profound concern, not uncommon for judges, for the state that the law was in, even as a barrister, describing the leading case on the signature rule, L'Estrange v F Graucob, as a "bleak winter for the law of contract". Aside from all this, as it turns out, he was a mathematician too, and studied maths at Oxford. So I'm studying (almost) the same subjects as Lord Denning. Fantastic!

Now, as I often tend to, I'm going to change tangents completely. It's the young generation, they say. It's the computers. They're doing so many things on there at a time that they can't focus on one thing. Perhaps. But this is my post and it'll be a random walk if that's what I want.

So, fashion. After my test last night I've done a lot of internet browsing of the new Fall collections (and also the end of season sales for Summer). I'm coming to realise that my wardrobe is full of black (though most people could have told me that a long time ago..) and I'm now in the mood for colour. This is probably because while I've been looking at brightly coloured clothes because it's summer in America, it's still winter here and so everything is dark. I am quite keen for the geometric print skirts and dresses that have been popular in the US to come to NZ for summer, although I think NZ is often more inspired by the UK than the US in terms of its trends.

This leads me nicely to the my next (discrete) topic of discussion. Reasons why I wish I were living in New York City:

1. I keep getting emails from various clothes stores in the US (because when I was last there I signed up to be on virtually everyone's mailing list) and they are offering me various discounts and notifying me of various sales (75% off!) but I shall not be able to take advantage of these, being in the Southern Hemisphere.

2. Elle.com is advertising for interns. Aside from a career in investment banking/litigation, I've always wanted to be the editor of a fashion magazine, like another Anna Wintour. Sadly, I think the closest I'll ever get is the editor/review board role I've had for an NZ law journal.

It's now 12.44am and I've realised that it has taken me over an hour to write this entry. Time for sleep. Perchance to dream.

The man on the Clapham omnibus

"The rule that you are to love your neighbour becomes in law you must not injure your neighbour; and the lawyer's question: Who is my neighbour? receives a restricted reply. You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee would be likely to injure your neighbour. Who, then, in law, is my neighbour? The answer seems to be - persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions that are called in question . . ."

In Contract Law, we've been studying exemption provisions, and commonly one of the parties to the contract will want to exempt liability for negligence. The repeated mention of negligence made me think back to my Law of Torts classes last year, half of which were about negligence. The above statement of principle is from Lord Atkin's judgment in Donoghue v Stevenson, an extremely important case for Tort Law as well as for the common law in general, because it assimilates all the separate precedents relating to separate areas of negligence into one neighbour principle. I also love this judgment because it addresses an idea to which many practising the law sometimes show a willful blindness: the divide between what is moral and what is legal. Of course, the two concepts are not mutually exclusive, but they are far from the same thing. Here, Lord Atkin recognises this, but seems to make an attempt to combine them by couching a fundamental legal concept in the language of morality.

In other news, the second university semester is now in full swing. I handed in three assignments this week. I have two more to hand in next week, and a Contract Law test. It's only week four and I feel exhausted. At the end of this year I'll be 3/5 years of university done! It's exciting to be so close to entering the world of employment, but at the same time it still feels like I've only left school recently. That aside, here is a summary of my life at the moment:

Going up:

• Contract Law lectures: my professor is so entertaining and engaging that what is considered by most to be the Law degree's hardest subject is my favourite. I just hope that I do well in the exam for it.
• AULSS Executive student elections: so much better than the AUSA elections because all the candidates are my friends. It's also refreshing to see a student election where the candidates don't list "is drunk all the time" as a credential.
• Brownies: I've been sick for the last ten days, and on a couple of occasions my sister has brought home brownies for me from various Queen Street bakeries and cafes.

Going down:

• 2pm-4pm lectures: I love the subject, but at 3.30pm when I've been in lectures since 8am, I do start to feel a little dozy.
• Swine Flu: I've had it for ten days now and it's really hard to shake off. Being a small and relatively isolated community, the entire Auckland Law School seems to have got it at some point over the last three weeks.
• Kathmandu jackets: there is currently this stereotypical NZ university student image of a Kathmandu puffer jacket, a baggy t-shirt, black leggings and Keds shoes. It looks so unkempt; why must we live up to the stereotype?

Now that I've got to the end of this blog entry, I'm feeling satisfied that I have achieved something on my 'evening of rest'. Confession: I only thought to write about the tort of negligence because I felt that I had been negligent with my blog updating.