When the BBC asked me to present a series on the history of the English legal system – broadcast under the title of The Strange Case of the Law – like many other lawyers, I knew little about the subject. I have tried to make up for that deficit. It struck me that the story of the law should be better known, and that a short selective history was called for, devoid of jargon, replete with good stories, a restitution of the key of knowledge. This is the result: breaking no new ground, but providing a new approach to the telling of legal history, distilling the efforts of others in a way palatable to the educated layperson. There is no legal history quite like this. It is certainly panegyric, but with justification. The eulogy, however, at least so far as public law is concerned, may be an elegy.

England is a law-abiding country: parliament enacts laws; courts enforce and interpret them; citizens on the whole obey them. What is sought is justice beyond the rigidities of legalism or the letter of the law, justice that is blind and impartial, justice that is done by judges who are expected to be, and largely have been, the disinterested champions of law and of right, and by independent jurors who bring in the verdicts they choose. English law, legal procedures, the quality of the judiciary, trial by jury, and the championing of freedom, justice and equality under the rule of law are rightly recognised throughout the world.

In two respects the common law of England is not common at all.