Alternative Visions of Legal Biography: an Abstract

Abstract

Conolly, for example, have all been the subject of recent biographies that have sold millions, as have celebrity biographies and autobiographies.While political biographies are not in same league sales-wise, they remain popular 1 .Artists, philosophers, historians and even economists, from Bagehot and Beveridge appear to be in decline. Apparently they are selling less, and certainly fewer are published today than in the previous two hundred years. Perhaps contemporary lawyers and judges are less colourful, lack the popular notoriety and have become more narrowly professional than their counterparts of yore? Perhaps they have been eclipsed by a different notion of "celebrity", publication and the media?One could also point to the invidious comparison between the quantity and quality of legal biography in, say, contemporary Canada and the USA relative to Britain.While the best of legal life writing harnesses historical empathy with a commitment to the careful and conscious scrutiny of the past, the worst tends towards hagiography.However, change is in the air. High-quality British academic legal biography, pioneered by Heuston and Stevens in the 1960's and '70's, has grown and established a small, marginal, but discernible niche in the world of scholarship, 1 Margaret Thatcher, Mao, Indira Gandhi, Churchill, Harold Wilson and the Queen are just some of those who are the subject of recent best-selling biographies.