{"id":133,"date":"2015-01-15T10:11:23","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T10:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/?p=133"},"modified":"2015-01-15T10:11:23","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T10:11:23","slug":"is-law-an-art-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/2015\/01\/15\/is-law-an-art-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Law an Art?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Law an Art?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My perception of law has changed and developed throughout my life.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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 \u2018black letter\u2019 law) and to learn it \u2018parrot-fashion\u2019!\u00a0 What a shock it was!\u00a0 I soon began to realise that studying law, through various lens, enabled students to gain a full understanding about the foundation of law.\u00a0 These lenses included looking at law theoretically, conceptually and, studying at Kent Law School, critically \u2013 this was alien to how I had originally expected to learn law.<\/p>\n

In 10 years gone by, whilst teaching, I am now studying law once again.\u00a0 This time, examining law in conjunction with Humanities.\u00a0 In the few sessions we have had, I am now beginning to realise that I am studying law through another lens \u2013 law as an \u2018art\u2019.\u00a0 The question asks whether law is an art but one thing I do know is that I have never considered myself as \u2018arty\u2019 or creative being a lawyer!\u00a0 However, after reading the material for this module, I am having to reconsider my initial thoughts about the creative lawyering.\u00a0 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 \u2018art of persuasion\u2019 (something I learnt in Ian Morley\u2019s book \u2013 The Devil\u2019s Advocate).\u00a0 Thinking about the influential characters in fiction and on TV \u2013 Atticus Finch, Rumpole, Kavannagh QC and in recent time, Martha in Silk \u2013 you appreciate that these great characters possess the \u2018art of persuasion\u2019.\u00a0 By articulating creative arguments, they have achieved \u2018justice\u2019 for their clients \u2013 another notion discussed in the readings to come.<\/p>\n

As Clive Anderson wrote in the Telegraph in 2009, in his piece about Garrow\u2019s Law, William Garrow, an 18th<\/sup> Century barrister, was a\u00a0 key figure in developing the trials at the Old Bailey and began the adversarial system we have today because of his \u201cart as an advocate\u201d.\u00a0 So in answer to the question, is law an art, it has to be answered in the affirmative \u2013 so bring it on!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Law an Art? My perception of law has changed and developed throughout my life.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39897,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[136347],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39897"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}