Ashes and Sparks
Stephen SedleyAs a practising barrister, the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Sedley wrote widely on legal and non-legal matters, and continued to do so after becoming a judge in 1992. This anthology contains classic articles, previously unpublished essays and lecture transcripts. To each, he has added reflections on what has transpired since or an explanation of the British legal and political context that originally prompted it. Covering the history, engineering and architecture of the justice system, their common theme relates to the author's experiences as a barrister and judge, most notably in relation to the constitutional changes which have emerged in the last twenty years in the United Kingdom.
Review"The best book I've read so far this year... You could have no interest in the law and read [this] book for pure intellectual delight, for the exquisite, finely balanced prose, the prickly humor, the knack of artful quotation and an astonishing historical grasp. A novelist could be jealous."
- Ian McEwan
Novelist
"Cambridge University Press has done a great service to constitutional scholarship by republishing the elegant essays of a lawyer who has been at the cutting edge of civil liberty law for the past half century ... Sedley's life is both inspiration and testament to changing the legal light bulb to give off a brighter glow - as is this first book"
- Geoffrey Roberts
New Statesman
"With an impeccable literary style and a nice turn of phrase... it is easy to see why [Sedley] is so greatly admired by his legal colleagues."
- Michael King
Times Higher Education
"All in all, it is a remarkably informative book"
-Jerold Waltmen
Baylor University The British Politics Group Quarterly #149
This informed and unconventional view of the history, engineering and architecture of the justice system draws on the author's experience as a barrister, an academic and a judge, most notably in relation to the constitutional changes which have emerged in the last twenty years in the United Kingdom.