Each of the six books I have published commercially was put out by one of a quartet of commercial publishers.  One was Australian Scholarly Publishing.  It is now preparing the three books referred to below. 

At my age, longevity is not on the menu, and I will be limited in my contribution to the process.  Feel free therefore to spread the news. 

I set out below the blurb and Foreword for the three books and I will publish extracts later.

The War against Humanity

The Decline of Courtesy and the Fall of Dignity in Government and Business

Blurb

Are you afraid?  Do you trust government or business?  Do you ever get to speak to a sensible person?  Some corporates pay their chiefs fifty times those left under them – the fewer, the better.  An essential arm of government, the professional civil service, died two generations ago.  We are the playthings of robots and inured to discourtesy and inhumanity.  Inequality brings inequity.  1984 came generations before the AI fission that now threatens us.  Quo vadis?

Foreword (Extract)

The principle of humanity

In 2018, a Boeing aircraft for no apparent reason plunged to the earth killing all on board. Less than a year later, another Boeing of the same model suffered the same fate. More than three hundred people died in these crashes. In each case, the fault was found to be a failure in the computerised mechanisms that resulted in the pilot’s not being [BS1] able to override the robot driving or flying the plane. Boeing struck a deal with regulators and was then prosecuted for fraud for reneging on it. So, with the guidance of Groucho Marx, they struck another deal.

These frightful tragedies made headline news all around the world. And yet all of us in our everyday life continually suffer every day because people we deal with hide behind, and cannot or will not override, robots. Our very humanity is being challenged and undermined in almost everything we do.

We are in truth facing a war against humanity – and the hideous revenge of the robots.

We that were once young chatter about a movie that was made shortly before we babyboomers arrived, and which we have seen so often – Casablanca. What is the secret of its aura or alchemy? And what is it about so many of those on the screen that continues to enchant us – to put us under their spell – again and again?

It is clear enough with Ingrid Bergman, and her provoking veneer of propriety – the hats are just a bonus. But plain Humphrey Bogart? Just what is it that sets him so far apart – and so much higher than the rest?

Well, he is not afraid to show us when he is hurt. You have to see it on the big screen to catch the look of white terror in his eyes when Ilsa walks back into his life at Rick’s in Morocco. This is very high theatre, indeed. It’s the kind of look the Commendatore could have extracted from Don Giovanni. 

And there is something else. Bogart looks like he takes the trouble to think. Perhaps that’s what gets us in. He thinks. And he feels. The great man is, after all, human – just like the rest of us. The tough guy is in fact vulnerable. And the woman is downright sexy as well as being sublimely beautiful. If there were any robots in Casablanca, they came in Nazi uniforms, or from the usual suspects.

The Adversarial Trial

Gone with the Wind

Blurb

At common law, juries decided issues of fact and the stronger case won.  Under the inquisitorial mode, a dossier is compiled, and the judge inquires into a kind of truth in a massive judgment.  The result resembles a sandpit for the rich and infamous.   A veteran lawyer looks at the lack of courage in the profession to accept responsibility.  This book is not just for lawyers, but Justice Nettle says it should be essential for those aspiring to the Bar.

Foreword

This book is about how to practise law in litigation.

The five papers in this book come from different phases in a lifetime spent in the practice of our law.  That time now spans more than half a century.  I spent it as a barrister or solicitor – I have never been too fussy about the distinction – with more than thirty years presiding over statutory tribunals on a sessional basis.  My professional life was seasoned with many enlivening sojourns at the universities of Cambridge, Harvard and Oxford. 

For the last twenty-five years or so, my focus has been on analysis and writing about the law or related issues in its history, literature, and philosophy.  I have done so in far too many papers and books (of an embarrassingly large number).  This used to be called jurisprudence, but the time of the jurist has passed.

I have therefore seen the practice of the law from many angles – including a time in 1985 drawing a bill for an act of the Victorian Parliament to regulate lawyers’ fees (which the lawyers persuaded John Cain to drop before I got run out of town).

There is a theme common to the five papers.  It is the failure of our profession to deliver fair and timely justice.  This comes from a lack of experience and a failure of nerve.  As a result, it would be tart to say that our sovereign is in breach of his obligation not to sell, or to delay or deny justice – tart, but not unfair or wrong.  And Magna Carta is still part of our law – what might be called a ‘sovereign’ law.

The citation from the end of King Lear gives the reader what auctioneers call ‘Fair Warning’ that you are entering the zone of a Grumpy Old Man – and I know what fate awaited that Grumpy Old Man.  (It was only partly foreseen in Hamlet.)

But I do think that we as a profession have been far too lax, at least in the civil cases discussed here, in dealing with symptoms of a very obvious decline in the way that we discharge our professional obligations to the people whom we have the honour to serve.

Trial by jury in civil actions has all but gone from our common law in my lifetime, as we have veered toward the Roman or European model of inquisitorial dossier – or docket.

And a prime reason for the decline in the practice of our law is our failure to teach and learn the history of that law – which is just history in a phase of momentary arrest.

Another reason is the failure to apply the basic laws of evidence – that embody logic, fairness, and common sense.  No-one should be appointed to hear and determine legal issues until these rules are second nature.

I apologise for the repetition in these papers.  My bad form on these subjects is contained in the previously published papers referred to near the end of the Notes to this book.  In addition, I think the Victorian Bar News published a censored version of the paper on The Law of Evidence – as I recall it, a gaggle of editors thought I was insufficiently respectful of the Bench.

In my view, my generation has badly let down those following us.  I fear for my grandchildren and children even.  I don’t think we have done as much for them as our parents did for us.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Staying Afloat in a Profession

Blurb

Not many go to God wishing they had spent more time at the office.  A seasoned professional looks at how to build a platform for life around a profession.  The curse of technology allows us now cheaply to furnish our spirits with the fruits of civilization – literature, music, the drama and communion of sport, art, the cellar, the kitchen, the bush, and the world.  Sense and sensibility.  If you’re just there for the money, you’ll go mad.

Preface

The great German historian Theodore Mommsen richly enjoyed life both inside and outside the academy.  He wrote prolifically, but that did not stop him siring sixteen children.  He is one of those scholars who had done all the hard work at the bottom – so that when he pauses to make a large observation, we listen to him.  He knew what it was to get fulfilment in large if not equal measure at both home and at work. 

In his magisterial History of Rome (which brought him a Nobel Prize), Mommsen said:

When man no longer finds enjoyment in work, and works merely in order to attain enjoyment as quickly as possible, it is a mere accident that he does not become a criminal.

If you work mainly for the tax man or the bank manager, you will learn the sad truth memorably stated by an English philosopher that the life of man may be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’.

Publishing a book on your personal philosophy may not be a good move in Australia.  Nor would it do to publish one under the title of one chapter of this book – ‘What I believe’.

But I have been allowed to lead a full life both within my profession and outside it, and I want to try to pass on some of that good fortune.  It may help others struggling to maintain what is called ‘life balance’ if I set out what I see as the reasons that my luck still holds.

I have written the book for anyone trying to get where they want in a profession or business while becoming more fulfilled elsewhere, but the material may be of use or interest more generally.

After a discussion of what is entailed by membership of a profession (which draws heavily on a chapter in The Making of a Lawyer, Hardie Grant, 2008), there is a chapter on my underlying beliefs, and a chapter each on the furniture of the mind and life outside the profession.  The final two chapters illustrate underlying themes – something like what used to be called a ‘commonplace book.’

I am suspicious of business plans, and even more suspicious of ‘life projects’, but there is something to be said for taking time now and then to reflect on what it is all about.  We should in my view proceed on the footing that we only get one go at this, and the old saying was that you will not hear someone on their deathbed saying ‘I wish I had spent more time in the office.’

I have been fortunate.  The law is just history in a state of mild arrest.  It requires stabs at prediction after logical analysis and a sniff of the zeitgeist.  Then you try to find the point and express it.  Then there is the drama of the contest.  So, all the strands of my interests, training, and experience come together.  Shakespeare is a good example.  As is test cricket.  Or Gibbon.  Not many people are so lucky.  

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