Snippets from The Reduced Law Dictionary by Roderick Ramage
Cakes & ale
“The law does not say that there are to be no cakes and ale, but…[none] except such as are required for the benefit of the company…the company might lawfully expend a week’s wages as gratuities for their servants; because…liberal dealing with servants eases the friction between masters and servants, and is, in the end, a benefit to the company. It is not charity sitting at the board of directors, because as it seems to me charity has no business to sit at boards of directors qua charity.” Bowen in Hutton v West Cork Railway (1883).
Common law & equity
Lord Coke declared the common law “the perfection of human reason”. We then develop a system of equity for, as Mr Justice Blackstone says, “the correction of that wherein the law was deficient”, giving two systems, one being perfect and the other correcting its deficiencies. Lord Selden said of equity that it is “a roguish thing. For Law we have a measure, know what to trust to; Equity is
