It is a great honour to be giving this, the first Gordon Slynn Memorial lecture, and I thought I would start with a quotation, which, perhaps appropriately for a lecture in memory of one of the foremost post-war European Jurists, comes from Anatole France’s Le Lys rouge – the Red Lily. The quotation (translated of course, as I am not going to subject you to my French accent, which would have my Parisian grandmother rolling in her grave) is this,
‘The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread’
That remark expresses a view about what could be called the substantive justice of law: about the fairness of general laws. Should they treat all alike, all equally, when individuals are not socially or economically equal? The answer which Monsieur France looked for was that they should not. For him, law should not dispassionately treat all alike. Its majestic equality did not, he thought, affect all equally and this could not be countenanced. Others took a different view; as is the way of political thought; and that debate continues.
