Abstract
In an October 2017 lecture entitled ‘Contractual Interpretation: Do Judges sometimes say one thing and do another?’, I pointed out that the law on contractual interpretation as laid down in ICS v West Bromwich Building Society had not survived the two recent UK Supreme Court decisions in Arnold v Britton and Wood v Capita. In a May 2018 lecture entitled ‘Preserving the integrity of the Common Law’, I gave a number of examples of recent UK Supreme Court decisions, with which the highest courts in other Commonwealth common law jurisdictions had not agreed. I suggested that the development of the common law should be incremental and that judges should be cautious about seismic changes or approaching landmark cases with a blank sheet of paper. In this lecture, there is a return to the theme of the appropriate development of the common law, to ask how crucial certainty really is to the common law, as compared to impeccably reasoned judicial creativity. The lecture looks at some recent examples including a further consideration of Patel v Mirza and Ochroid Trading v Chua Siok Lui …
Sir Geoffrey Vos, Chancellor of the High Court, Certainty v Creativity: Some pointers towards the development of the common law, SAL Distinguished Speaker Lecture, 14 September 2018.
First posted 2018-09-17 12:18:51
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