![handle is hein.journals/denlj10 and id is 1 raw text is: In Memoriam
Professor Robert Francis Vere Heuston, D.C.L. (Oxon.),
born 17 November 1923, died 21 December 1994
Gordon Goldberg*
One of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary's definitions of law is the laws
as a system and that surely is how the laws are (or at least purport to be) studied
in this or any University and how the judges seek to interpret them. Regarded as
a system, law is a branch of philosophy; for, while defining system as, inter alia,
a set of connected things or parts arranged to work together, and as considered
principles of procedure, [including those] of government, the same dictionary
defines philosophy as love of wisdom or knowledge, especially that which
deals with ... the most general causes and principles of things ... [including the]
study of principles of human action or conduct.
In England, in the 17th century, the essential connexion of law with philosophy
became apparent in the person of him, whom the Encyclopaedia Britannica names
as the renowned philosopher [Sir] Francis Bacon and who was known also as
Viscount St Albans and Baron Verulam, Lord High Chancellor of England from
1618 till 1621. In natural philosophy (or science) he formulated, and gave his
name to, the Baconian method of careful and methodical observation of facts
[independently of any a priori rationalization] as a means of interpreting nature
or studying natural phenomena. This, in its own sphere, is the very method
which is characteristic of English law, as was made clear by Sir Nicholas Browne-
Wilkinson, V.-C., in Lonrho v. Tebbitt:'
The methodology of English law is to decide cases not by a process of a
priori reasoning from general principle but by deciding each case on a case-
by-case basis from which, in due course, principles emerge.
Thus it is perfectly proper for there to be in Jesus College, Cambridge, an Arthur
Goodhart Professor of Legal Science; and, as the last of his many distinguished
academic posts which are known to us in this University, this chair was held by
the late Professor Heuston in 1986-7.
*.Senior Lecturer, University of Buckingham
1.[1991] 4 All E.R. 973 at 979.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/denlj10&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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