The Rule of Law, By Tom Bingham

A consummately entertaining summation of our legal system by a former Lord Chief

He proposes eight essential principles, each of which he illustrates with a wide variety of examples.

The first is that the law must be available to everyone and, so far as possible, intelligible and clear. But he admits that sometimes the search for clarity can go too far, and quotes from some regulations under the Banking Act of 1979: "Any reference in these regulations to a regulation is a reference to a regulation contained in these regulations." As he says: no room for doubt there.