[lit-ideas] The value of consistency
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:40:56 +0100 (BST)
For those mainlining the second Critique, snorting the categorical imperative
or spooning consistency, a rehab programme devised by the late Lord Bingham:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/law-obituaries/7997574/Lord-Bingham-of-Cornhill.html
There it is writ:-
"Bingham was often described as a liberal with a small "l", and when asked
about the description he admitted that he "wouldn't want to be called
illiberal". He was suspicious, however, of the notion that the law lords could
be easily categorised. "They're curiously unpredictable," he said. "I don't
think any of us aims to be consistent. I actually regard consistency in a judge
as a vice." "
Admittedly it is later writ:-
"Bingham's publications included The Business of Judging (2000) and, most
recently, The Rule of Law (2010), a characteristically accessible explanation
of such notions as equality before the law, respect for human rights and
procedures that safeguard fair trials. As one reviewer wrote, the book also
functions as an insight into "a special kind of mind": "Tom Bingham is a Lord
Denning of sorts, but one with discipline in place of egoism" and "a consistent
rather than selective sense of right and wrong"."
But then, if consistency is a vice, this may be no bad thing. Or perhaps it is
simply that the notion of consistency is itself here not being used
consistently enough.
The question whether law and morals may be rightly analogised here also raises
its shrunken, hairless head.
Donal
Not so long ago, or far away
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