Uncommon Law
Auspitz, Josiah Lee
Book Review/Josiah Lee Auspitz The Unconstitutionality of Fun • • One is struck in rereading these cases —now in their second edition and thirteenth printing—at the great and unacknowledged debt...
...Haddock had jumped into th Thames to win a bet, and was able on ap peal to refute all the specific charge against him: attempted suicide, endan gering the lives of mariners, causing a obstruction, bookmaking, interferin with an authorized regatta, etc...
...Herbert's carefully-indexed collection will save him the trouble of spending countless hours in dusty archives looking up these cases in the yellowed issues of Punch, where they originally appeared more than a generation ago...
...Moreover, the serious law student will find that A.P...
...Haddock showed that since golfing had not been invented in 1745, it could not be covered under this act, and even if it were, that cursing on the golf course is a form of temporary insanity...
...Haddock (surely by now he should have been knighted as Sir Albert) won damages from the Crown—forharassment when he refused to show his passport to British authorities on his way to France...
...Albert Haddock...
...The Lords Lick, Arrowroot, Sweet, and Sheep were unanimous in concurrence...
...This volume is one of those few things at which Britain still has a comparative advantage...
...And again, in the cross-filed action Haddock v. The King, Haddock v. Constable Boot, and Haddock v. The Southern Railway, Mr...
...In a later suit against the tax authorities, Haddock won the right for writers to deduct sunlamp treatments and vacations under the business allowance for wearand-tear on machinery...
...And since no American publisher exists, the purchaser will be doing his bit for the Motherland in her time of need by ordering Uncommon Law from his bookseller...
...v. The King: "Every public speaker is a public peril no matter what his opinions...
...By his successful defense in one of the several cases with the title Rex v. Haddock, the defendant, whose colorful language regularly attracts a claque at a difficult hole on the golf course, escaped punishment under the Profane Oaths Act of 1745...
...The same might be said for money expended on the price of this book, which has more than doubled in the past decade...
...In case after case he has, by his ingenuity, eccentricity, and litigiousness, pioneered new rights for all of us, and clarified many important points of law...
...The damages awarded him, though often large, could not have sufficed, for he also lost a L10,000 case for defaming a patent medicine called Sinko...
...An least of all may they do unusual action `for fun.' People must not do things fc fun...
...Herbert Methuen (London) L2.50 ing the rights of Englishmen against encroachment by the Foreign Office...
...In upholding his view that a passport is addressed only to foreign authorities, the Lord Chancellor recommended that the Crown grant Mr...
...In winning the famous Board of Inland Revenue v. Haddock, for example, Haddock, by his courageous act, established the principle that a citizen is entitled to pay his taxes by writing a check on the back of a cow, and that conducting this animal to the tax collector's office does not constitute a breach of the peace, a public nuisance, or any other such offense...
...Or of the definition of the reasonable man in Fardell v. Potts and the finding, in same, that "at Common Law a reasonable woman does not exist...
...It is not for me to say what o 32 The Alternative: An American Spectator May 1971 fence the appelant has committed, but I am satisfied that he has committed some offence...
...We are not here for fun...
...The citizens c London must realize that there is almcm nothing they are allowed to do...
...This celebrated case of the 1920s, which involved Asquith, Lloyd George, and many other notable politicians, was finally resolved in Haddock's favor, on the grounds that the name Liberal as the testatrix understood it referred to the party of freedom and that Mr...
...There is n reference to fun in any Act of Parliamen If anything is said in this court to encoui age a belief that Englishmen are entitle to jump off bridges for their own amuse ment the next thing to go will be the Col stitution...
...Haddockwas the only claimant to present a legislative program consonant with true liberty: namely, "a Bill for the Institution of the Death Penalty for Police Officers who Enter Respectable Clubs Disguised in Evening Dress...
...A man capable of that remar would be capable of the grossest forms c licence and disorder...
...v. the United Alkali and Guano Simplex Association: "Decent fellows, I daresay, some of you, but with no particular intelligence or financial training...
...Haddock L5,000 (this in the 1920s) "in recognition of his public services" in protectUncommon Law: Being 66 Misleading Cases Revised and Collected in One Volume by A.P...
...Especiall illuminating is the case of Rex v. Haddoc heard before the Court of Criminal Ap peals by Justices Light, Addle, am Mudd...
...The careful reader will find the answer in Herbert's presentation of In re Macalister, in which Haddock contested the right of several other claimants to the one-million-pound estate left by Miss Mary Macalister to "The Liberal Party...
...Haddock may well have spent Miss Macalister's legacy entirely on the numerous appeals recorded in this volume...
...In addition to the Haddock cases, there are many, many other classic opinions...
...Book Review/Josiah Lee Auspitz The Unconstitutionality of Fun • • One is struck in rereading these cases —now in their second edition and thirteenth printing—at the great and unacknowledged debt which Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence owes to Mr...
...How, one wonders, could this poor writer afford all of his litigation...
...Neverthe less, the court held him guilty, in a mem orable opinion which has influenced generation of American jurists: "...th appelant made the general answer the this -was a free country and a man can d what he likes if he does nobody an harrd...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator May 1976 33...
...Surely every law student is now aware of Sir Ethelrud Rutt's famous attack on the jury system in British Phosphates and Beef Extract, Ltd...
...and other beneficent measures whose purpose is neither to improve, uplift, enrich, nor reform the British subject, but to increase, by however little, his liberty and contentment...
...Sinko does not remove that sinking feeling, for I have tried it," he wrote...
...In addition, the costs of his trips to Monte Carlo, and of such purchases as champagne and the hiring of a yacht, were all allowed as business expenses, since, as Haddock contended, how can an author "study and depict the gilded life of Society without constant visits to...places where Society is to be found?' Even in defeat, Haddock has estab lished landmark precedents...
...If so, it was money well spent...
...It cannot be to clearly understood that this is not a fre country, and it will be an evil day for th legal profession when it is...
...Or of the finding against free speech in Engheim, Muckovitch et al...
Vol. 9 • May 1976 • No. 8
