ABSTRACT
The law in Britain is not just of interest to lawyers. The legal system affects us all because it purports to regulate a lot of our behaviour and to provide a framework for much of our interaction in personal, social, and economic life. More than that, the law is also the deliberate and articulate expression of our political decision-making; the legal system is part of the political system. So we are interested in law, not only in a passive capacity as people affected by it, but also in our active capacity —as citizens, voters, agitators, and politicians-because it represents what has been done or resolved in our name and in the name of our community. It is not merely a law for us; if we are a democracy, it is also supposed to be our law.
