Legal eagle Tushar Mehta recounts instances of the famous British humour as seen in law courts

Few professions attract as much ready-made suspicion as the law. Praise, when it comes, is measured; mockery, on the other hand, is abundant. Lawyers are variously described as dull, devious, greedy – or some artful combination of all three.

Edmund Burke famously observed: “Law sharpens a man’s mind by narrowing it.”

King Louis XII of France was even less charitable: Lawyers use the law as a shoemaker uses leather; rubbing it, pressing it and stretching it with their teeth, all to the end of making it fit for their purposes.

Even more damning is the statement of Professor Thomas Reed Powel, who defined the ‘legal mind’ as: If you can think about something that is related to something else without thinking about the thing to which it is related, then you have a legal mind.

An old comedy play also describes a lawyer as “an odd sort of fruit – first rotten, then green, and then ripe.”

These barbs, though not entirely undeserved, don’t paint a wholly accurate picture. The law has always housed not only logic but wit; and often the two travel together. Even in the most solemn courtroom, flashes of humour have punctured pomposity, deflated vanity, and occasionally restored proportion. This chapter is concerned with such moments – not the humour of judgments crafted in chambers, but in the living, spoken wit of advocates and judges in open court.

And that search must necessarily begin in Britain.

British humour is a genre unto itself. It thrives on understatement, irony, and a certain studied composure – what is often called the “stiff upper lip”. In the British judicial tradition, humour rarely announces itself; it arrives dryly, sometimes so quietly that one notices it only a moment later.

Consider the following exchange: Lord Chelmsford (Frederick Thesiger, 1st Baron of Chelmsford) was walking down St James’s Street when he was accosted by a stranger who exclaimed, “Mr Birch, I believe.”

“If you believe that, sir, you’ll believe anything,” his Lordship replied, and carried on.

The courtroom, despite its robes and rituals, has never been entirely immune from such wit. Across England, Scotland, and Ireland, anecdotes abound – brief, sharp exchanges between Bench and Bar, preserved in memory long after the cases themselves have faded. Their origins are often uncertain. Many were handed down orally before finding their way into memoirs, magazines or collections of legal lore. Yet their persistence suggests something enduring about the culture they represent.

Traditionally, British judges have been seen as guardians of decorum, presiding from the dais with studied gravity. Humour, in theory, was thought unbefitting the Bench. “This is a courtroom, not a theatre,” was the conventional rebuke to levity. Yet the reality was more nuanced.

It is the judge who holds power in the courtroom and who, ultimately, makes the rules. There are, to be sure, some brilliant – and some decidedly less brilliant – instances of judges deploying humour in courtroom exchanges, and of enjoying the reciprocal wit and sarcasm of the advocates before them. Even when the judicial jest is less than sparkling, all present – lawyers included – are obliged not merely to endure it but to greet it with hearty laughter, however dutiful. This ritual, handed down from generation to generation, is less about amusement than about survival: to remain on the right side of the “law” – that is to say, the judge, who in the courtroom assumes something akin to the position of a deity in a temple.

The Victorian cartoonist Edward Tennyson Reed captured this dynamic perfectly in Punch magazine, in a series depicting both judge and barrister laughing, with the caption: “Always laugh at the judge’s jokes. It is not upon such an occasion that his lordship observes that he will NOT have the court turned into a theatre.”

The joke, as ever, lies in the recognition.

What follows are some of these stories – instances where gravity met levity, where argument yielded to repartee, and where the majesty of the law coexisted, however briefly, with mischief.

We may begin with the eminent barrister and politician Fredrick Edwin Smith – the first Earl of Birkenhead. He was perhaps the most frequently quoted lawyer for his wit and devastating courtroom barbs.

FE Smith was a barrister of formidable ability, celebrated for his ready humour and courtroom repartee. He rose to become the Attorney General and ultimately Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. He was also a very dear friend of Sir Winston Churchill, with whom he shared at least two well-known qualities: wit and alcohol. Combining both passions, Churchill once declared: “I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.”

Sadly, the same could not be said of FE Smith. He died at the age of 58, at the height of his career, of cirrhosis of the liver leading to fatal pneumonia. But he did leave behind a treasure trove of courtroom exchanges.

In an early case, Mr Justice Ridley told him:

‘Well, Mr Smith, I have read your pleadings, and I do not think much of your case.’

FE Smith had replied: Indeed, My Lord, I am sorry to hear that, but your Lordship will find that the more you hear of it, the more it will grow on you.

A similar exchange, in a different setting, is also attributed to him:

Judge: “Mr Smith I read your entire file yesterday night and I am not convinced.”

FE Smith: “My Lord, I was not present when you read the file. A judge is supposed to read my file in the context of what I argue. Please hear me de hors the impression you gathered while reading the file in my absence.”

On another occasion, FE Smith challenged a ruling on procedure and, receiving no satisfaction, persisted until the judge exclaimed in exasperation: “What do you suppose I am on the bench for?”

“It is not for me, Your Honour,” replied the Barrister suavely, “to attempt to fathom the inscrutable workings of Providence.”

Mr Justice Darling, no stranger to wit himself, once grazed his shin while alighting from a taxi at the Law Courts. Delayed in taking his seat on the bench as he had had to send for ointment, he apologised to the jury for keeping them waiting.

He was met with Mr Smith’s courteous concern, who expressed hope that it was “nothing serious”. Justice Darling replied: “Thank you, Mr Smith. No – there will be no vacancy at present.”

Justice Darling’s wit was no less sharp in other contexts. When counsel attempted to unsettle a witness and asked him: “Are you a married man?”, the witness replied, “I am.”

“How many children have you?”

“Two.”

After several further questions, counsel returned pointedly: “You say you have two children, and you are married?”

It was at this point that Justice Darling interjected pointedly: He told you he had two children a few moments ago. There are hardly likely to have been any fresh arrivals since your first question!

Excerpted with permission from The Lawful and the Awful: Quirky Tales from the World of Law, Tushar Mehta, Rupa Publications.