This is the paperback edition of Robert Stevens’ popular and widely reviewed book concerned with the independence of the judiciary in England. Using records kept by the Lord Chancellor’s office Robert Stevens charts the progress of the concept of judicial independence through the Victorian era and the early twentieth century up to 1963, the most recent year for which records were available to the author.In reading the book we are reminded that of all our great institutions the judiciary has been subject, in modern times, to perhaps the least scrutiny and reform. Robert Stevens’ scholarly and entertaining book explains, with the help of many valuable jurisprudential and social insights why this is so, and in the process offers the reader an unusual and very candid picture of the careers and lives of many of England’s best known judges and politicians.