This book offers an introduction to the English legal system that places the law in its contemporary context. Unlike other conventional accounts, it presents a coherent argument, organised around the central claim that modern law must be understood as an articulation of human rights and due process values.

Authors’ acknowledgements, Publisher’s acknowledgements, 1. Introduction Part I - The politics of the Common Law: perspectives, rights, processes, Institutions, 2. Introduction Part II - Procedural Fairness, the Rule of Law and Due Process, 3. ‘As a system…the common law is a thing merely imaginary’, 4. Recording law’s experience: features of the ‘case’, 5. The postcolonial, the visible and the invisible: the normal and the exceptional, 6. Institutionalizing Judicial Decision Making: Public Reason and the Doctrine of Precedent, 7. What We Talk About When We Talk About Common Law: The Practice of Precedent , 8. The Mirror and the Dialogue: The Common Law, Strasbourg and Human Rights, 9. The judicial practice of statutory interpretation, 10. The Politics of the Judiciary Revisited: rights, democracy, law, 11. Judges and Democracy, 12. The Integrity of the Court: Judgment and the Prohibition on Bias, 13. The Value of Participation: The Rights of the Defence, Equality of Arms and Access to Justice, 14. Open Justice, Closed Procedures and Torture Evidence, 15. Imagining Civil Justice, 16. Imagining Criminal Justice, 17. Conclusion