| Return to Contents Book Review AN OUTLINE GUIDE: THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF JERSEY LAW by STEPHANIE C. NICOLLE, Q.C., H.M. SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR JERSEY. Privately printed and published 1998. It having been decided in 1992 to establish an alternative to the requirement that all individuals wishing to qualify as an Advocate had to obtain a "Certificat d’Etudes Juridiques Françaises et Normandes" Miss Nicolle was asked to prepare a draft syllabus for what was to become an examination, albeit short-lived, commonly called the "Caen Alternative". The syllabus which she produced must, to many practising Advocates, have opened the eyes to a whole treasury of legal treatises and commentators on the roots and sources of the common law of Jersey, many of whom would have been unknown to them. Although the "Caen Alternative" no longer exists in its old format, it lives on in two of the papers prescribed in the Advocates & Solicitors (Qualifying Examination) (Jersey) Rules 1997. Miss Nicolle with her customary clarity has now provided, not merely the aspiring advocate but also those who practise in the courts of this Island, with a readily readable and very valuable instant guide to the sources of the common law of Jersey. As she says in her introduction:- "Knowledge of the law, in any real sense, depends upon an understanding of the law, and an understanding of the law is impossible without an understanding of its origin and development." With the assistance of this work there will no longer be available to an Advocate the excuse that he or she did not cite the relevant provisions of Norman and French law, and the Jersey case law based thereon, because he/she did not know where to look. Hopefully, the complaints which have featured so regularly in the past in judgments of the Royal Court that only English law has been cited to the court, will no longer be made. The format of the work makes for easy understanding as it proceeds from 911 to the present day. As with "The Jersey Law of Property", which she co-wrote with Mr. Paul Matthews, this work makes available to both the student and the practising lawyer a veritable gold mine, not merely of the works to which reference should be made, but also the relevance or otherwise of a particular work. Although she does not say so in , in Section 14 she impliedly criticises that passage in the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Public Services Committee v Maynard [1] which states "no great weight can be placed on French law as it exists today in ascertaining what is Jersey law….". In so doing she shows the extent of the learning and the degree to which this little book will soon become an authority to be cited to the court in an appropriate case. This work helps to fill that vacuum described by Le Geyt (in translation) as "…..having in Jersey but little written law….". In my opinion it is compulsory reading not only for the aspiring Jersey lawyer, but also for all those who practise law in the Island and profess to have the learning necessary to give correct legal advice. Of course the availability of many of the works to which she refers is limited. That is not a criticism, but on the contrary it highlights the need to have available to all practitioners copies of the books which form the backbone of the Jersey common law. Miss Nicolle is to be congratulated on providing another valuable text book on the law of Jersey in a sphere where there was, previously, nothing. R.J. Michel is the Bâtonnier and the senior partner of Crills, 44, The Esplanade, St Helier, Jersey. |