Is the cab rank rule still in operation, asks Jon Robins
It was the late John Mortimer’s most celebrated fictional creation that caught the conflict inherent in the cab rank rule between high principle and abject submissiveness. “I’m a black taxi, plying for hire,” said Horace Rumpole. “I’m bound to accept anyone, however repulsive, who waves me down and asks for a lift.”
The proud boast was that the poorest, least popular of defendants could be represented by the Bar’s finest—because, like taxis, they were required to take the first fare that comes along. Earlier this year the justice minister (and barrister) Lord Faulks described the “cab-rank rule” as “a cardinal principle” of the Bar.
Questioning the rule
Frankly, that’s pushing it. As a recent correspondent to the Law Society Gazette pointedly noted, cabs are no longer so obliged and, so numerous are the exceptions available to members of the Bar, neither are barristers—at least, not in any meaningful sense.
In a 2013 report commissioned by the Legal Services Board, the authors—professors John Flood and Morten Hviid—wryly questioned the value of a rule “if
