ABSTRACT
This article surveys Tony Weir’s case notes and book reviews for the Cambridge Law Journal between 1963 and 2002 in order to illuminate Tony’s unique genius as a legal academic and thinker. Reading Tony’s case notes and book reviews reveals that he cannot be characterised as either a ‘lumper’ (someone who seeks to reduce the law down to a few elemental ideas and concepts) or as a ‘splitter’ (someone who resists such a reduction). Instead, Tony’s genius lay in his possessing the Keatsian quality of ‘negative capability’. This quality allowed Tony to be both a lumper and a splitter at the same time, refusing to identify himself definitively with either way of thinking about the law.
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Nicholas J McBride, Between Chaos and Cosmos: Tony Weir in The Cambridge Law Journal, The Cambridge Law Journal, volume 80, supplement S1: 1921–2021 Centenary Issue, September 2021, pp S107-S125, https://doi.org/10.1017/S000819732100060X. Published online by Cambridge University Press: 4 October 2021.
First posted 2021-10-05 14:00:24
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