Winter Solstice, 2022
Today is traditionally the “shortest day” of the year.
Though, of course, one cannot say anything as bold as that on the internet without somebody somewhere taking it upon themselves to type out a reply saying you are wrong: “actually, a day is still 24 hours long, technically” or “actually, a day is not scientifically 24 hours long exactly, technically” or “actually, not in the southern hemisphere”.
But this is the season of goodwill, even to reply guys, so this is a short post on the passage of legal time.
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Law has – or has had – its own rhythm of time.
In England, time ran from 1189 AD.
Before then, it was actually time immemorial, technically.
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Until 1963, Acts of Parliament were not formally referred to by the year in which they received royal assent, but by the session of parliament under the relevant monarch:
As you can see above, the very Act which made the change to modern dating was known as “CHAPTER 34 10 and 11 Eliz 2” notwithstanding the short title provided for in section 2.
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Case reports of a certain age also do not refer to the year of the case but to the volume number of the edition of the law reports, such as this famous case from the ninth volume of the exchequer reports at page 341:
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In the courts themselves, the “terms” were more important than any other time period, which Dickens captures well in the first sentences of Bleak House, before riffing on how long the case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce has taken:
“London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. […]
“Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. […]
“The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world.”
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Outside of court, the commercial world was more far dominated by quarter days than calendar months.
(And, of course, until 1752 the start of the calendar year was reckoned as on the quarter day of 25th March rather than anything more rational.)
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So a step into legal history is akin to stepping into a TARDIS or Marvel’s Time Variance Authority or an airport departure lounge – that is say, it like stepping into a world where the passage of time runs differently, if it can be said to run at all.
The notion that the English legal system corresponded with the year of lay people is a fairly recent notion.
And so reply guys correcting lawyers on dates will always run the risk of a rejoinder or surrejoinder of “well, actually…”.
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Have a happy Solstice, and thank you all for following this blog.
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