My first duty is to apologise for the delay which has caused me deliberately to wait until this relatively late date after my return to Cambridge a year ago before I felt able to deliver this inaugural lecture. For six years the locusts of war ate into my all too limited learning in the law, and involved a loss of all contact with academic life which made advisable a period of recovery—not yet completed—before I plucked up courage to say what I want to say to-day—in all too scanty words. I did, however, in the course of last year, address some informal remarks to the Cambridge University Law Society—and I take this opportunity of thanking their Officers for the invitation—on which occasion I put forward some considerations which seemed to justify the conclusion that the effect of the late war had been to stress the importance of public law.

The following summary is based on notes compiled, like the common place books of old, for personal use. As the Editor was so good as to express the opinion that such a thing would be useful to the readers of this journal I have prepared it for publication.

The cause célèbre of King v. William Joyce, subsequently reported as Joyce v. Director of Public Prosecutions, was concerned to a large extent with matters of interest for international law, and it is mainly from this point of view that it is proposed to discuss it in the present article. Obviously the case is also of considerable importance both for criminal law, in so far as it is concerned with the crime of treason, and for constitutional law inasmuch as it bears directly on the question of the nature and the obligations of allegiance. However, it is probable that the case books which will claim it most insistently will be those of international law. For the decision in Rex v. Joyce is not only an authority on certain aspects of allegiance owed by aliens and of the right of a State to assume jurisdiction over acts committed by aliens abroad. It sheds light on such questions as the nature of diplomatic protection of citizens, the right of a State to protect diplomatically persons who are not its citizens, the obligation of allegiance of so-called protected persons, and some others. Not all these questions were judicially answered, but they loomed large in argument and imparted to the proceedings the complexion of a case concerned predominantly with international law. In view of this it may be pertinent to preface this article by drawing attention to a point which appears to be a mere matter of terminology but which, it is believed, raises an issue of wider significance.

It was not until 1898 that the rule that the House of Lords is absolutely bound by its own judgments was finally established in London, Street Tramways Co., Ltd. v. London County Council. The justification for this rule was stated by Lord Halsbury L.C. in these words: ‘What is that occasional interference with what is perhaps abstract justice as compared with the inconvenience—the disastrous inconvenience—of having each question subject to being reargued and the dealings of man-kind rendered doubtful by reason of different decisions, so that in truth and in fact there would be no real final Court of Appeal?’ It is strange that the Lord Chancellor did not refer to the fact that although the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is, for constitutional reasons, not absolutely bound by its own judgments, nevertheless no ‘disastrous inconvenience’ has followed from this. In practice the Judicial Committee follows its own prior judgments unless they are clearly wrong, but it does so on the ground of reason rather than on that of absolute authority.

The series to which the four volumes that are the subject of this article belong began in 1928, and appeared regularly until their production was held up by the recent war. The publication of the 1940 volume was delayed until 1943. Within the last year, activities have been renewed with such success that the volumes for 1942, 1943, 1944 and 1945 have been forwarded to us. The Foreword of Dean Arthur T. Vanderbilt gives impressive imformation about the magnitude of the task. He tells us that in 1942 American reported decisions filled seventy-four books totalling 76,362 pages, and that, although the sittings of most of the legislatures were suspended in that year, enactments nevertheless occupied 8,939 pages. Thus, great as is the burden on the editors of our Annual Survey of English Law (which Dean Vanderbilt courteously mentions as the source of inspiration of the American Annual Survey), it is light compared with that upon the shoulders of those who have to deal with legislation and judicial decisions in over fifty jurisdictions. The aim of each volume of the American Survey is modestly described as merely to present in orderly fashion the significant trends in the more important branches of the law through the year.' This underrates the scope of the work, for it is gratifying to both practitioners and teachers of law to find included in it chapters on ‘Jurisprudence,’ ‘Legal Education, Bar Organization and Economics,’ and ‘Administration of Justice—The Courts and Law Reform.’ Moreover, account is also taken of outstanding literature in the shape of textbooks and articles in law journals.