Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I LAYING DOWN THE LAW: 600–1500
- PART II CONFLICT OF LAWS: 1500–1766
- PART III THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE LAW
- 18 The Purity of England's Air
- 19 The Menace of the Mob
- 20 The Fear of the Felon
- 21 Garrow's Law?
- 22 The Tongue of Cicero: Thomas Erskine
- 23 The Drum Major of Liberty: Henry Brougham
- 24 The Bonfire of the Inanities: Peel, Public Protection and the Police
- 25 Lunacy and the Law
- 26 Necessity Knows No Law
- 27 The Apollo of the Bar: Edward Marshall Hall
- PART IV THE RULE OF LAW: 1907–2014
- Bibliography
- Index
27 - The Apollo of the Bar: Edward Marshall Hall
from PART III - THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE LAW
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I LAYING DOWN THE LAW: 600–1500
- PART II CONFLICT OF LAWS: 1500–1766
- PART III THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE LAW
- 18 The Purity of England's Air
- 19 The Menace of the Mob
- 20 The Fear of the Felon
- 21 Garrow's Law?
- 22 The Tongue of Cicero: Thomas Erskine
- 23 The Drum Major of Liberty: Henry Brougham
- 24 The Bonfire of the Inanities: Peel, Public Protection and the Police
- 25 Lunacy and the Law
- 26 Necessity Knows No Law
- 27 The Apollo of the Bar: Edward Marshall Hall
- PART IV THE RULE OF LAW: 1907–2014
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The great lesson he taught us throughout his long and arduous life at the Bar was the faculty of not appearing to believe in one's case, but of actually believing in it.
Sir Ernest Wild (Bowker, Behind the Bar)The advocate must acquire the art of being passionate with detachment and persuasive without belief.… There is no lawyer so ineffectual as one who is passionately convinced of his client's innocence.… Nothing is left of Sir Edward but a list of ‘Notable Trials’ and a few anecdotes about his outrageous way with an air-cushion.
John Mortimer, Clinging to the WreckageParliamentary legislation in the nineteenth century continued the reform of the criminal law. Today no courtroom drama is complete without the defence barrister vehemently addressing the jury on his client's behalf. It is the culminating point of the defence, cross-examination merely providing the material for the speech. Yet until 1836, except in treason trials, only the prosecution had this privilege, not the defence. In that year the Prisoners' Counsel Act specifically authorised defence barristers to address the jury. Defendants could not yet give evidence under oath in their own defence, and barristers, allowed at last to speak on their behalf, were in effect their mouthpieces. The adversarial system as we know it was fully formed.
This change allowed for the inexorable rise of defence barristers, who began to dominate the court room in all sorts of cases from the venial to the most vile. The defence speech was to be the highlight of the case, and required flamboyance and theatricality. Advocacy was an art, but it was also an act. The barrister as thespian was emerging. With the advent of the popular press such men would become celebrities. The role was tailor-made for a showman, and none mastered it better than the tall, handsome young Rugby and Cambridge man, Edward Marshall Hall, who in 1882 was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple.
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- Law, Liberty and the ConstitutionA Brief History of the Common Law, pp. 252 - 258Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2015