Almost at the finishing line and things on this Law and Humanities module are finally beginning to make sense!  After studying the history of the relationship between law and humanities vis-à-vis the interpretation of law through literary texts and traditions, examining the critical possibilities of contemporary scholars in certain projects, especially through the mechanism of rhetoric, we are now looking at the responsibility and ethos of scholarship of scholars, lawyers and critics.

In ‘Educating the Total Jurist?’ W. Wesley Pue examines the role of legal education and how they shape future aspiring lawyers, or in his words, ‘citizen formation’.  He describes the image of lawyers as one of ‘gentlemanliness’ as befitting the ‘well-rounded barrister’.  By using the thoughts of eminent lawyers and scholars across the globe, he provides evidence of what he describes as the notion of the total jurist.  One such eminent lawyer includes our UK’s infamous Lord Denning; he talked about the ‘spirit of the profession’ which embraces values as ‘frankness, fairness, honesty, courage and the recognition of one’s duty to the Court and client.’

However, the values of ethics, morality and ‘gentlemanliness, I believe, have diminished over time and empathise with Pue’s view.  In today’s climate of globalisation, it appears that the legal profession is ‘all about the money’ (taken from Jerry Maguire), ‘success’ and what Margaret Thornton suggests as ‘the real danger of returning legal education to the ‘trade school’ mentality of the past’.  It is an uneasy thought to think that law schools are churning out ‘mere half-lawyer’ as Pue advocates.  If this is true, then legal education and the educating of a ‘total jurist’ is doomed.

However, later in his article, Pue suggests that not is all lost.  Even if legal education is being promoted in universities as value-free, there is the hope that law schools will return ‘to a more self-aware legal education’.  Furthermore, he hopes that we, as humans, will take on the responsibility, or ‘ethos’, to instil our own values, not just education and profession, but in everything we do in life!

Pue’s article resonates what I have been thinking about legal professionals and its values since embarking on a career in law, but am I wrong?  Are we, as students of law and humanities, not taught how ‘to rise above self-interest and the narrow view’ thus becoming ‘mere half-lawyers’ or are we resistant and/or responsible enough to return to becoming the total jurist of the past?

Is Law an Art?

My perception of law has changed and developed throughout my life.  Before entering education as a mature student, as a lay person, law was about what you read in the papers (mostly criminal activities), what you watched on TV and thinking you know your rights whilst going about your everyday life.  As a student of law, my initial thought was that to study law was to learn about the offences and to learn statutes (what I now know as ‘black letter’ law) and to learn it ‘parrot-fashion’!  What a shock it was!  I soon began to realise that studying law, through various lens, enabled students to gain a full understanding about the foundation of law.  These lenses included looking at law theoretically, conceptually and, studying at Kent Law School, critically – this was alien to how I had originally expected to learn law.

In 10 years gone by, whilst teaching, I am now studying law once again.  This time, examining law in conjunction with Humanities.  In the few sessions we have had, I am now beginning to realise that I am studying law through another lens – law as an ‘art’.  The question asks whether law is an art but one thing I do know is that I have never considered myself as ‘arty’ or creative being a lawyer!  However, after reading the material for this module, I am having to reconsider my initial thoughts about the creative lawyering.  The first thing that sprung to mind when considering law as art was that the most important skill a barrister has to learn (or a solicitor-advocate) is the ‘art of persuasion’ (something I learnt in Ian Morley’s book – The Devil’s Advocate).  Thinking about the influential characters in fiction and on TV – Atticus Finch, Rumpole, Kavannagh QC and in recent time, Martha in Silk – you appreciate that these great characters possess the ‘art of persuasion’.  By articulating creative arguments, they have achieved ‘justice’ for their clients – another notion discussed in the readings to come.

As Clive Anderson wrote in the Telegraph in 2009, in his piece about Garrow’s Law, William Garrow, an 18^th Century barrister, was a  key figure in developing the trials at the Old Bailey and began the adversarial system we have today because of his “art as an advocate”.  So in answer to the question, is law an art, it has to be answered in the affirmative – so bring it on!!