2 March

The genius of England for me is the common law. One of the things shock jocks get very wet in the underpants about is what they call ‘activist judges’, judges making law. But that IS common law. Law made from precedents, precedents from lots of individual cases before the courts. I think it’s genius because (have mentioned before) with this case-based system, there is no distinction between specific and general. Between the individual and the collective. Every specific case can form a precedent for every other case, every precedent is not a general thing, it’s just another specific case. All the boring debates about the individual versus society or the individual versus government are almost irrelevant, in the common law. England doesn’t have a written constitution. It doesn’t need one. It uses precedent and tradition, rather than ‘general’ principles. That’s also the real beef with Europe for Brexiteers, Europe uses mostly civil law (general principles). It’s a fundamentally different way of understanding society.