Book Reviews Forsyth, Christopher, and Ivan Hare (eds). The Golden Metwand and the Crooked Cord: Essays on Public Law in Honour of Sir William Wade QC. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. xl. 352. Index. $85. The mysterious title of this Festschrift is drawn from the writings of Sir Edward Coke CJ, for whom the common law was the Metwand and the Crooked Cord was the unlawful misuse of discretion. These phrases represent very well the special contributions that Sir William Wade has made to the discipline of administrative law, both in giving coherence to the decisions of the courts in the development of the common law in the last 50 years or so, and in the light he has thrown on the ways in which English courts have sought to control discretionary decision-making. His book Administrative Law, now in its seventh edition, brings superb clarity of thinking and expression to a mass of case law and statutory material which, until about the time that Wade started to write about it, had grown like Topsy in an incremental and unorganized way. The 16 essays in this collection are by academic lawyers, judges specializing in administrative law and judicial review, and practising members of the English bar. In each of these groups both English and Commonwealth learning is represented. The papers deal with some of the most fluid and important areas of English administrative law: the search for a coherent constitutional theory which can only be inferred from the common law (Allen), review of prerogative powers and the control of power (Craig), the procedural or adjectival law privileges enjoyed by government in judicial review (Lord Cooke of Thorndon, Sir Stephen Sedley, Beloff), the grounds for judicial review (Cane, Hare, Forsyth, Sir Patrick Neill, Sir John Laws, Beatson), remedies for breach of European law (Lewis), justifications for the exercise of 'eminent domain' or, in English terms, compulsory purchase powers (Taggart), and broader constitutional issues such as whistle-blowing and the electoral system (Cripps, Sir Anthony Mason). Hence this collection represents not only a tribute to Wade, but also an overview of the state of public law scholarship in common law jurisdictions which, unlike the United States, still lack entrenched bills of rights and therefore rely on the ability of the courts to develop the law to meet changing needs. The adaptability and responsiveness of the common law, or more precisely of the legal reasoning techniques adopted by those working in the common law tradition, are well illustrated here, together with some healthy scepticism about the extent to which the courts can be trusted in the long run to handle disputes about the powers of the state without either unduly undermining democratic values, or failing in the task they currently see themselves performing of protecting private bodies against excesses of power. The quality of the work in this collection is impressive. There is a strong sense in these contributions of the legacy of history to English administrative law and the ways in which contemporary developments need to understand history, not to be misled by it, and to break away from it Dawn Oliver University College London
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