What They Taught Me at Cambridge

“…Anything they can get away with, politicians’ll try. That’s why you are here, you know that don’t you? The moment you turn your back… But you’re not going to turn your backs, are you? I’m going to see to that…”

“Between 1998 and 2000 I studied law at Trinity Hall, which was founded in 1350 to train lawyers. This is what it was like to read law at Cambridge University, whose law school is consistently ranked in the top three globally by QS and THES:

Very solemn morning in hall after photo had been taken in the sunshine of Front Court. All 103 new besuited undergraduates there. The Master, linguist Sir John Lyons, spoke to us.

His message was clear: if you’re gay, don’t worry.

He also reassured those amongst us who think they got into the Hall by virtue of a clerical error. Apparently, they’ve only ever made two mistakes in selecting people. It happened in the sixties. And both of them had left with good degrees.

First supervision with John Collier, in his rooms on C staircase. At an ancient wooden table A., B. and I sat around. I have yet to be baptised as Magic, but the sun streamed in and Evensong made its way across Front Court to accompany our discussions of the Sources of International Law. JC began thus:

“You read the rummest things in the papers, you do. Why are we sending the tommies into Serbia?

“If you read Andrew Marr today in the Independent…

“I let him into this University. He should have been reading International Law. Then he wouldn’t write such hogwash. It’s because, he says, we’re at risk of losing our permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

“Miss A., take this and read Article 108 of the UN Charter [she reads out loud that before any member of the Security Council may be kicked off, all members have to agree].

“You all heard that? We’re bomb proof. And you know why we’re bomb proof? We wrote the bloody thing, that’s why. You don’t think we’d have been stupid enough to be kicked off the Security Council. Even today’s government is not going to say ‘okay we’ve had enough. Take our seat India or Malaysia’.

“For god’s sake, these people don’t even know that the Charter exists, never mind what’s in it. When you leave this place you’ll be able to spot such hogwash at a thousand paces…”

Supervision with Mr. Fleming, who let me into the University. With A. and Geordie B., my supervision partners. We sit in Mr Fleming’s rooms. When I first arrived in Cambridge a gentle hand-written note from Mr Fleming invited me to come see him. At the end of our meeting, he’d asked me:

“How would you like me to address you?”

“Stephen,” I replied, slightly taken aback.

“Well, Stephen, you can address me as Mr. Fleming.”

From his rooms, the view split between Latham Lawn, the river and Trinity mews.

The leaves of the huge tree absorb the whole view of the river as twilight closes in. It’s hot in there. Boxes of books lying all around –Mr Fleming had had to move to allow the new library to be built. Now he has just moved back in. The stone clad leaded windows.

We’ll have 32 hours of lectures a week and two supervisions, he tells us. We’ll need to read before our lectures and he reckons we’ll need about 10 hours for each of the supervisions.

Fuck me. He kept on telling us we were better than Pizza Hut. He must have mentioned Pizza Hut ten times. We had no idea what he was talking about. In hall a final year enlightened me: our main rival in the law stakes at Cambridge is Downing College. There’s a Pizza Hut opposite it.

***

Back from two days in London. Feeling disoriented today. Still do not feel that I have been doing enough work. What occurs next, I suppose, is the thought that actually having done a lot of work, I shall still feel the same. We’ll find that bridge after we cross it. Or is it… Hmm…

This is the beginning of Week Four. The difficulty is not in doing enough work to get by on. It lies in the lack of time to do everything to a depth which is satisfying. The eternal quantity-quality-time-space quadrodox! This is such an incredible amount of work, why is it I can’t make life easier for myself, just do a dumb job, accept that defeat and superficially move on?

Yesterday, had handed in my first Supervision essay to Mr Collier. In the Supervision with him, he tore B. and me apart. He started off about my (admittedly) rather farfetched contention that there was a Constitutional Convention which said the King could not marry a divorcee. Then using his fingers JC went through naming every single King and Queen since 1066. After each, he asked me:

“Did they marry a divorcee?” and each time, I had to reply: “No.”

By the end of history, we’d found that no monarch had ever married a divorcee and that therefore no such convention can have arisen.

In any event, JC went on:

“Exactitude is what we need. Is that clear enough?

“And, what’s this? Footnotes? You actually think that I am going to look up your quotations?”

Sorry I squeaked! The written comment on my returned essay was: quite well written, surprising examples.

Want to get Mr Fleming’s essay done by Sunday evening, so I can start on the Internaggers [International Law] essay which I have to do for next Thursday.

So sitting by the river before going back upstairs home to P8 and then up to the fourth floor of the College library to read Dickinson v. Dodds. It’s three in the morning.

Now, though to Reservations in Internaggers. I am one of JC’s boys now. He has marked me and the way I write. This is his final year teaching here after, for ever. His boys and girls will be in the Supreme Court for decades to come. He stamped his mark on me by showing me how crap my essays are and why. And now to Internaggers and my second try.

Handed in my first Tort essay. Lots of material for him to tear apart. It is pretty coherent, I think. I find out at five tomorrow anyhow.

Christ. At the risk of moaning this whole thing is the most difficult thing that I have ever done. I handed in my third essay of the week for Land to Mr Oakley at my Supervision earlier today. It was completed at 4.30 am today. That would be relatively okay but for the fact that it was not in anyway better than it would have been had I written it within five minutes of my sitting down to do it yesterday afternoon. I was just running around like a headless chicken, through text books, in the statute books, case books and law reports.

In JC’s Internaggers supervision he returned our essays. A.’s essay, as ever, was perfect –how does she do it? While B. and I were yet again up for ridicule. JC is very funny when he tears you apart. The drama. The pacing up and down past the wooden supervision table, passing us, turning suddenly or suddenly sitting. The grabbing desperately at the pages of the essay. The incredulous gulp, as if what he is about to point out makes him as angry as if we had just killed someone. He says to B.:

“So boy, what do you mean the International Court ‘leaned’? Do you mean to say, magic-boy, that all fifty judges and what not [at this moment you know what is coming and it is impossible not to laugh even when it is being directed at one] leaned like this [JC leans to one side]. For god’s sake you’re not at a Middlesborough game. Did they not teach you how to write up there?

“And you, Mr Douglas, ‘scenario’ is the most vulgar word I have ever seen [that wipes the smile off my face].

“I do not know where you get these words from. Television, I expect. A play, perhaps, but not from reading law at Trinity Hall.

“Its vulgarity is only matched by Mr. B.’s ‘the court highlighted this the court highlighted that’. A highlighter is something [he grabs for my highlighted statute book, but does not find the page in time] you mark a textbook with. It is not something a court does.

“Now, boys and A., I don’t need to say it to A., now boys I never want to see, never, do you hear? I never want to see these words ever again…”

That is but a snippet. We’re being broken down here. You have set out to learn something they know billions more about than you do and they make you feel it, all the time.

Happily, Mr. Oakley was pleasant this morning. It’s like the army and now I have joined I’m open to whatever they throw. Psychological and intellectual bullying. Conditioning us into modes of ever lasting swingeing critical thought. I have the feeling of running along a brick wall which is one hundred feet high knowing there is a chink in it somewhere. And through that gap I can build a space big enough for me to climb in. If I had known what I know now in my meeting with my tutor, Mr Fleming, in week 0 when he had said he thought I was very brave to be doing what I am doing at my age. When he was my age, he had said, he was married with a child. I only could think then how much harder it would be to be still working seventy hours a week in some grim job, rather than being here in leafy Cambridge. But there are certain compensations in a grim job.

Sunday. Satisfying weekend. Feeling of space and time. Relaxed. Today, I started reading cases for my Tort essay. But I only got through about five before the library closed at 5.45 pm. Leaves damp mulching under foot walking back at twilight past King’s Backs.

Observation: I can conceive of how these essays ought to be. If I give myself enough time on them ie. start them as soon as they are set as I can, then I CAN actualise that conception.

Finished off my Tort essay. The one I wrote last night in note form was rubbish. I think I have the point without, I imagine, writing about it as if I had read the text books. We’ll see what Mr Fleming has to say about it.

What a day. Yesterday it was so misty that the spires of King’s disappeared into the sky like this place was some sort of mini-Manhattan. Today was freezing.

Got my essay back from Mr Fleming. It was rubbish. He wrote ‘a little disappointed after last weeks.’

I had dinner with Nick this evening in hall and I told him that yesterday I messed up my Tort essay for Fleming and that I had just came back to my room afterwards and sat here for three hours afterwards wondering what the fuck I am doing here, trying to decide whether to get drunk or read cases. I decided then, I told him, to do the essay again. Nick said that that was what sorted out the winners from the losers. The simple fact of just moving on, of conquering adversity with perseverance.

Yesterday with Mr Collier in C5. He came out with some gems. When I went into the room, B. was seated at the table and JC was leaning over him with a Walkman.

“Do you know what I was listening to…can you hear that?”

“No Mr Collier,” B. replied Geordily.

“Well, I, I, I was listening to Brams, while I was reading the Law reports this afternoon.”

I sat and assembled my notes before placing them in front of me on the desk. A. arrived then and sat down. I asked her how she was. “Shit,” she replied quietly.

“Right, magic girl and boys what are we doing this week? Parliamentary Sovereignty…

“What is that? We prefer to talk about Parliamentary Supremacy in Cambridge, don’t we?…

“Now what happened in South Africa in 1932?…

“They want to paint my portrait, I mean I do not particularly want my portrait painted. I shall live on, I hope, in the hearts and minds of my boys and girls, just as they live on in mine.

“Well, many of them live on in my heart, but some of them, some of them they live on in my mind. Good god do some of them live on in my mind.

“There was this chap a few years ago, a rugby blue. He and his friend were driving back up to Boho and from what I could gather they just stopped in the middle of the road, opened up the bonnet and were vomiting on the engine. The constabulary, of course, came up and detained them at her majesty’s pleasure, for the night.

“The next morning one of his rugby chums rang me up and told me the story. He said our friend needed someone to defend him. He thought I could help him. I said:

‘My dear boy, the best thing he could do is find a suit, polish his shoes, put on a Trinity Hall tie and go represent himself. I can’t do a thing for him. If he has broken the law, it is out of my hands’.

“Anyhow, he went to court and the judge was one of my boys. He got a small fine. The moral of the story? There is none…

“So, South Africa 1932… Is apartheid unconstitutional?

“Chief justices a, b and c stood up to the might of those fascists who wanted to legalise apartheid. Two of their sons were at Emmanuel when I was an undergraduate… In the end the government introduced an Act of Parliament that enlarged the upper house. They pushed the damn thing through and darkness returned to Africa…

“You see judges can only do so much, they can only keep the politicians at bay for a certain time. Sometimes it’s quite long enough, other times -and these are the times that matter- the judge’s power is eliminated. Parliament or the prime minister changes the law and the most terrible things happen… They killed one of my boys in Chile in 1973. Why? Because he stood up to them, that’s why. So do you think this could happen here boys and girl? Well?”

The three of us were terrible silent. A gentle breeze wafted in the scent of wisteria through the open window. Notes fluttered. Six pm chapel bells. The choir practising. A girl poshly crying across Front Court ‘Come on, Olympia. Hurry.’

“Of course it bloody well can.

“They’ll try anything. Anything, they can get away with. That’s why you are here, you know that don’t you? The moment you turn your back… But you’re not going to turn your backs, are you? I’m going to see to that…”

I have just finished rewriting my Tort essay. I think I have it now at least the bare outlines of it. I’ll give it to Mr. Fleming on Monday and we shall see what he has to say. Feeling good.

I had my last Tort supervision of the term today. He was telling us that he has to interview 54 applicants for Law over three days next week. Almost everyone who applies will be predicted to get three or four A level A’s. A quarter of those will be interviewed. A sixth of those will get in.

Yesterday, sitting on a bench in Trinity gardens gazing at the multicoloured sun setting sky thinking there is more to life than study even during this period of accelerated learning… Juliet and a friend up from London pass by on a punt. I join them. We went to Byron’s Pool and back along the river. Delicious moments. Everything will be all right. Later went for walks and watched the stars from the terrace wall by the river.

I have been working on an essay concerning the acquisition of territory. Essay finished by Sunday evening. Then, a start on Contract to prepare for a supervision on Wednesday. Then, I suppose, Land, before getting into Tort for the following week’s supervision. I have about, I estimate, twenty-two topics to note and learn between now and the end of May. That is about one point five a week, so it is time to get my method in order and Tripos questions in mind.

So this is where it is at. Sitting in P8 for the beginning of the six hundredth and forty-ninth Lent Term at Aula Trinitatis.

The first draft to do and then I had to write it out in proper writing for Mr ‘Don’t ever hand me in a typed essay’ Collier. It went smoothly. It was just a matter of sitting down to do it. I had finished the first draft by three-thirty and with the help of a Cafetière of coffee I completed the final draft by five thirty.

I bought an alarm clock today. I had woken up late and went to my JC Constitutional Law supervision on Judicial Review. Jesus, he was not quite as hopping mad as he had been last term when he went ‘highlighting’ and ‘scenario’ berserk but while he was returning our essays there was one moment towards the end of the supervision: JC had been giving B. a hard time because his whole essay had apparently been hogwash. JC was going through it sentence by sentence pointing out what was hogwash about it. A. and I were silent. Suddenly instead of pounding the table in front of him JC, his face being bathed in the sunlight streaming through the window which I had my back to, touched B. hard on the shoulder. B. winced momentarily. The room was tense. Later as we left the room JC stated accusingly at B.:

“You made me late home yesterday.”

“How, Mr Collier?” B. asked bewildered, unsmiling, in his Geordie twang.

“I was looking out the window yesterday at five-to-five. I could see you in the middle of Front Court chatting away to one of your chums. Chat, chat, chatting about god knows what. You had something in your hand, flapping in the wind.

“I was thinking ‘for god’s sake, boy, if that is for me do hurry up your chat’. But you just stayed there and I could hardly shout out the window ‘bring it up to me here, now’ could I? For one thing I was not sure that it was for me, but then at exactly 5:07 pm you ambled into the Porters’ Lodge and placed it in my pigeon hole. I know that because I took it out of there precisely 15 seconds later’.

B. smiled his cheesy ‘I am only nineteen-years-old smile’ and all tension dissipated.

It’s snowing in Cambridge. It has been for the past few hours. So far not much of it has stuck but it insists on coming down so with a bit of perseverance it should start sticking soon. Come on snow!

It has to be said, I have just written my best ever legal essay. I dealt with everything in the question and tied up all the loose ends and handed it in two hours early.

Fuck. He wrote at the end of the miracle essay that he thinks we ought to have a chat in private sometime. That was all he said, and one tick you’d need an electron microscope to detect.

I just had a supervision on the Royal Prerogative with JC. It was magic. Despite knowing very little factually and case-wise about the subject thankfully B. and A. carried the day. JC was really in good form. He told us several very funny stories. But the real reason, of course, why the supervision was magic was because he called me quite clearly and loudly “Magic” for the first time. Both B. and A. (‘you may well be in danger, Miss A., of getting a first in the Tripos’) have been magic for some time and once he almost called me magic but it was only quietly muttered. This afternoon, though, he said to me quite clearly:

“You can forget about that little protestant university on the banks of the Liffey that you may have graduated from. You are my boy now. You’re one of ours. And don’t you ever forget that Magic Boy.”

In this context “Magic” referred to the mystical process through which learning and understanding is transferred from the teacher to the disciple. In JC’s world when that process took place successfully between him and his pupil, and if it happened repeatedly, then, the pupil became magic. In A.’s case, she was so clever, that that process had happened within the first supervision. However, in mine, it had taken a wee bit longer.

“Do not pontificate unless you are in Rome,” that’s Mr. Collier’s essay-writing advice.

I got my Tort essay back. Hardly anything had been written on it. I looked over at B.’s essay and it had heaps of things written on it, at least fifteen points. Mine had ‘Good’ written beside certain paragraphs and at the end it said ‘Good as far as it goes’. I think that’s bad.

I swallowed chewing gum last night and my tummy aches. I think part of it is stuck to my throat.

Spent the morning preparing for a JC supervision for Internaggers. I read the chapter in the book for it but that I can’t even remember the title of the topic, I must have really learned it well.

I am so tired these days I am literally falling into bed.

I just finished what I think is to be my last essay of Lent term 1999. I will find out from JC how it is tomorrow, but I think it is my best yet for him. Pretty simple, clear points and very little cladding or bullshit.

I went to see Oakley first thing and asked if I could go next week because of the play I’m in. We’re not going to go under because of that, he replied.

Started to work for an essay on State Responsibility for JC. I finished it that night. I knew it was good. He called me Mr Magic as I was closing the door as I came into the room. He criticised it as still being too long:

“Which is perfectly all right, because you can easily write less. The important thing is the tone and the structure and you have that now.”

Well, I have just been told that I am “obviously a very clever chap” by Mr Oakley in end of term meeting with my Director of Studies. He also said that there is no fear of my failing, but that a 2:I is by no means in the bag. In Mr Fleming’s report he reckons that I will do a lot better next year. They are all happy with the amount of work that I am doing, he even thought that I might be doing too much. Unfortunately the essay which Mr Oakley gave me back just before the start of our little session was appalling.

Exam-wise. All fine.

…..

This year my subjects are Criminal Law, Equity, EU, Criminal Procedure and Evidence, European Convention on Human Rights and a course with Dr Allott, one of the drafters of the European Economic Communities Act 1972, entitled Law and Philosophy.

My real news, though, is that I was selected to represent the University in a European Law Moot Court competition. My other team-mates are final year lawyers from other colleges.

I have made great progress in EU Law. I did all the supervision work necessary and it has left me a whole lot clearer about things.

This afternoon wrote an essay for Criminal Procedure and Evidence on joinder in indictments. Handed it in three hours early with a note apologising for sending it a day late. Only when I got back here did I realise that the supervision is not until tomorrow. Dr Munday must think I’m a nut case.

The last week has seen the development of a pretty shoddy submission for the European Law Moot Court competition into a relatively shoddy one. I have done most of the work and stayed up all night and all the next day to get it to the post office by the 5.30 pm deadline. As I was picking up the printed out submission in the Porters’ Lodge I noticed the page numbers were missing and it was 5.20. Happily A. was there calmly to help me sort it out. The others [from other colleges] are too busy and too inexperienced at legal writing to understand why what we had proposed to submit, before my copious revisions, would never have passed muster.

Today the list went up in the Porters’ Lodge for Christmas Hall. There are two sittings, one on Thursday evening and one on Wednesday. By the time I saw the list, it was full. Someone had put my name down among the middle table.

I had my end of term Director of Studies meeting with Mr. Oakley at 7 pm. It went fine. Munday and Angus gave me good reports. Munday said I always seem to “be on the Ball,” which can hardly be true.

Wonderful time to be back in Cambridge. The sky is clear and the buildings rise up like huge lumps of lead in the night.

Played for the Hall against Trinity today in footy winning 6–0. However, I swear although I only played the last five minutes I looked worse than all the others who had played a full match.

Reading an Outline to the Rules of Evidence. Half-way through it. We had a mooting practice. It went ok.

Work-wise: tomorrow a supervision in CPE which I must do the reading for during the day. On Thursday/Friday a Criminal supervision for which I must do the reading and write the essay. On Friday I ought to have an Equity supervision instead of the one I shall miss the following week while I am in Holland at the mooting competition. Over the week-end I must do the work for EU. I don’t know what I have to do yet

I expect my fellow Euro-mooters will be mesmerizingly boring and over-earnest, so it’s a good job the competition’s in Holland.

Where else would you get a supervisor who exclaims quite spontaneously “Well, stack my vitals” in response to my somewhat far-fetched and verbose answer to his original question?

I owe an essay in Crim, one in EU (from before Christmas), one or two in Equity and I have to do some human rights stuff. To work.

The European Law Moot Court competition regional finals in Leiden were last week-end. We did not get through to the oral finals, so we only had one day of mooting. However, we did win the ‘Best Written Pleadings Award.’ Against seventy-three other European law schools, I reckon that’s pretty good going.

Work-wise, I am losing it a bit. Lost the concentration. Next week we’re doing Defences in Criminal. I’m going to learn them now.

Skittling through Mens Rea.

In Criminal supervision yesterday with Dr David Thomas QC, I knew my stuff. I said straight out that I think the defence of Necessity should be expanded to cover situations of desperate hunger where someone steals food to evade hunger/sickness.

A. retorted Cambridgely, “the law’s not the place for that. That’s policy. That’s for politicians.”

Dr Thomas asks whether there is a case for doing that on the level of sentencing or mitigation.

B. replies that that would never work because what would happen if a homeless guy stole from another homeless guy.

Ignoring B., I, passionately, responded to A.: “If the law is the place to send them to prison, then it is the place to resolve it.”

She smiled patiently and quipped that if that is the case maybe the hungered one would be better off in prison.

Dr. Thomas chipped in to lighten things up: “Oh and there are plenty of cases where people are caught breaking into prisons…”

I stood my ground and say to him that it is not fair that someone should be punished for merely surviving and to B., I said, I reckoned English law was sufficiently sophisticated to take account of such a contingency as a homeless person stealing from another homeless person, eg. The defence only works when the defendant stole from a shop. I then said that it was appalling that on this dimension the demands of private property superseded those of humanity. It was the first time I knew totally what was going on here.

Woke at eight again. Was in library at nine.

By five I had finished the chapter I had looked at on Monday and had thought ‘fuck, I am never going to finish this’. It was on Articles 29–30 and Article 90 of the Treaty of Rome in EU law.

It is a spectacularly beautiful morning, the bells are peeling all over the place. Birds twitter, not a breeze or a cloud to be felt or seen.

I made it to the TH library, for an hour.

Just sit there, thinking of other things, gazing at the tourist punters and cyclists slowing and eventually de-biking as they reach the crest of the seagull bridge.

Two cigarette breaks. I still haven’t decided if people don’t smoke here because they’re square or because they’re intelligent enough to realise smoking’ll kill them. Either way a man’d die for the lack of a match when in need.

Last few days got into something of some sort of rhythm. Still crawling my way through the Theft Acts 1968 and 1978. Making progress and almost only one more chapter to go. Next it has got to be a wee bit of EU law, then, whatever, really only absolutely fucked for two exams: Equity and Human Rights (for years afterwards I would have nightmares about my Equity exam — I would wake up believing that I had missed it.)

I have made a decision, though, that I have beaten the disease of materialism. I do not seek after things.

Must hurry, since the spectre of Equity and Human Rights hangs over me. Too, need to do more work on CPE than I shall need to do for Crim and EU.

The tree I could suddenly see from my room in D staircase in Caius Master’s garden when I moved my desk is finally springing the first shoots of its Spring. It has awoken late and I think that it awoke now is due to the rather narky looking grey bird who sits on the bare branches every afternoon, it seems. All the other trees, all different are springing, have sprung into a maturate Spring by now. The first flowers of Spring are dying. I imagine we’re due for another wave soon.

On my way to my last exam I noticed that some of the TH first years had not even marked the statutes in their book. Last evening speaking to one of them by the river I rather self-deprecatingly explained that for the whole of first year I hadn’t noticed that the names of the people in the problem questions were always ordered alphabetically… Andrew, Bertha, Carl, and so on. The first year was, like, this is a BIG discovery. I thought he was taking the piss, but he was serious and was pretty sure none of the rest of his year had detected this particular pattern in all the stuff they throw at you. That made me feel better.

After graduation standing with my parents and Mr. Fleming:

I introduced Mr. Fleming as the don who’d let me into the University. Mr. Fleming responded, “Stephen, now you can call me David.”