An entertaining diversion for lawyers and others, Twenty Famous Lawyers focuses on household names and high profile cases. Contains valuable insights into legal ways and means and looks at the challenges of advocacy, persuasion and the finest traditions of the law.
A perfect gift for lawyers and others, Twenty Famous Lawyers focuses on household names and high profile events to provide valuable insights into the workings of the law and legal habits. Particularly strong on the powers of advocacy, eloquence, argument and persuasion.
With a backdrop of famous cases, trials and personalities, Twenty Famous Lawyers is a kaleidoscope of information. In the forefront are 20 lawyers selected by John Hostettler as representative of those who have left their mark on legal development from early times to the modern-day. They range across countries and cultures but centrally and importantly they concern people whose lives impacted on their profession-its values, standards, pre-occupations and pitfalls. From high politics to the development of human rights to legal loopholes, tweaking, manipulation and downright trickery, the book is ultimately a celebration of the contributions made by lawyers to society and democracy-an illuminating account of what can happen when lawyers pursue reform, push boundaries, challenge injustices or ignore the rules. With a 'supporting cast' which ranges from Julius Caesar to Oscar Wilde, Gilbert and Sullivan to the Prince Regent, Lily Langtry and trials for treason, murder, terrorism and even regicide the book visit courts from the Old Bailey to Westminster Hall to the Supreme Court of the USA to those of Ancient Rome and the Italy of the Enlightenment. Twenty Famous Lawyers contains chapters on the lives of: Clarence Darrow, Edward Carson, William Howe and Abraham Hummel, Matthew Hale, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Henry Brougham, John Adams, Helena Kennedy, Norman Birkett, Jeremy Bentham, Geoffrey Robertson, Abraham Lincoln, Edward Coke, Thomas Jefferson, Shami Chakrabati, James Fitzjames Stephen, Edward Marshall Hall, Gareth Peirce, Alfred Denning and Cesare Beccaria.
From the Text: [Henry Brougham] first made a name... as a lawyer by his defence of the brothers John Hunt and John Leigh Hunt in two prosecutions for seditious libel in their newspaper, The Examiner. The first trial, on 22 January 1811, arose from an article entitled "One Thousand Lashes!!" which attacked flogging in the army. As William Cobbett had only recently been fined and sent to prison for two years for criticising army flogging in his Political Register the verdict against Hunt could hardly be in doubt. Nevertheless, Brougham secured a brilliant acquittal [after a speech] which was remarkable for "great ability, eloquence and manliness."
John Hostettler is one of the UK's leading legal biographers, having written over 20 biographies and other books on legal history, including Garrow's Law (2012), Waterside Press.
