Over the years, observers of highbrow and popular culture have assembled a large menagerie of metaphorical pets to better their social commentary – Archilocus, and later Isaiah Berlin, befriended a wily fox who knew many things and a ponderous hedgehog who understood one big thing; the proverbial three little pigs learned to build their houses “as best they could”; the Japanese have their three wise monkeys who “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil”; George Orwell created a whole farm of political animals; and Aesop put together a whole stable of fabled beasts.

Although the law cannot compete with this rich and varied brood, it does have its own favored animals. Leaving aside that lawyers themselves are often depicted in the popular imagination as snakes and weasels, one the most celebrated of these legal creatures is a small and dead Scottish mollusk. Foraying for a safe and food-rich environment, it managed to force its way into the legal world in August 1928 in a way that few would have imagined. The fact that its actual existence in these particular legal circumstances has always been in doubt only adds to its notoriety. So, along with the unfortunate fox in Pierson (see Chapter 4), the humble snail holds pride of place in the legal garden.