Behind every legal judgment lies a human story, and not all of them are solemn. Some are absurd, some hilarious, some faintly alarming, and a few altogether unbelievable. In The Bench, the Bar and the Bizarre and The Lawful and the Awful, Solicitor General of India, Tushar Mehta, uncovers this neglected world of the legal profession with wit and a keen eye for the unusual, populated not merely by principles and precedents but by eccentrics, rebels, humourists and oddballs. The result is a spirited challenge to the notion that law is “routine, boring and absolutely mundane.”
The books emerged not from landmark judgments or courtroom drama but from reflection. Mehta recounts how late-evening observations evolved into a more ambitious project: “What began as the jotting down of a few notes on eccentricities, oddities and little-known stories of the legal system soon turned into a catalog of distinctive characters...” These volumes are not, he insists, “a critique of the law” but an attempt to depict it as “serious, ceremonial, occasionally self-important, often surprising and at times comical.” Mehta also consciously avoids examples from Indian courts, candidly admitting that he does not wish to “invite the collective wrath of judges and lawyers alike.”
The first volume, The Bench, the Bar and the Bizarre, explores legal eccentricity. Among its most memorable chapters is The Divinity Virus, devoted to what Mehta calls “bullies on the bench.” With characteristic irony, he suggests that prolonged exposure to judicial office can produce an incurable condition—“black robe-itis”—under which a judge comes to regard himself not merely as an arbiter but as “a deity, a demiurge.” Drawing on Professor Abbe Smith’s work on judicial bullying, Mehta shows how authority can harden into arbitrariness when not tempered by restraint.
In the chapter Judicial Rebels, dissenting opinions become vehicles for personality. The narrative assembles opinions that are, in Mehta’s words, “humorous, creative, acerbic, candid, and occasionally outright vitriolic.” Beneath the entertainment lies a serious question: are dissents necessary at all? Quoting Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Mehta notes that dissent can preserve “sanity, honesty and collegiality” on a divided bench. Drawing on examples spanning two centuries, including Justice Benjamin Cardozo’s description of the dissenter as “the gladiator making a last stand among the lions,” he argues that dissent remains an important safeguard against conformity and judicial populism. Equally engaging is Law Beyond the Living, where courts grapple with ghosts, demons, divine pronouncements and “paranormal paraphernalia,” occupying the borderland where legal rationality collides with belief.
The closing chapter, On Record but Off Balance, explores moments when judicial decorum—literal and metaphorical—abandoned the courtroom. In Betson and Cockram v. United Kingdom, arising from the attempted robbery of the Millennium Dome diamond exhibition, the presiding judge repeatedly nodded off during proceedings. One observer recalled that he would “actually slump in his chair and fall asleep... it seemed to me that the sound of his own snoring would eventually wake him up.” Mehta wisely avoids indignation. Judges, after all, are human.
The same exploration of law’s human and unpredictable dimensions continues in the companion volume, The Lawful and the Awful.
In the chapter Bench Without Borders, Mehta observes that judges are usually found in their “natural habitat”—the courtroom—and guard their jurisdiction with territorial zeal. He then sets out in search of occasions when they ventured beyond it. Sir Lancelot Shadwell reportedly granted an injunction while bathing in the Thames wearing only a swimsuit; others dispensed justice from Brighton Pier, taverns, railway carriages and bedrooms. Among the more colourful examples is Judge Seamus McCaffery, who presided over a makeshift courtroom beneath Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium for unruly Eagles fans, arriving on a Harley-Davidson bearing the slogan “Have gavel, will travel.”
These volumes are not, Mehta insists, “a critique of the law” but an attempt to depict it as “serious, ceremonial, occasionally self-important, often surprising and at times comical.”
A particular highlight is The British Art of Courtroom Wit. “The law has always housed not only logic but wit; and often the two travel together,” Mehta writes. Beginning with Britain, where courtroom humour approaches a national institution, he assembles exchanges that puncture pomposity, expose vanity and occasionally settle arguments more effectively than legal reasoning itself.
The tone darkens in The Anatomy of a ‘Rotten’ Judge. His subject, Justice James Clark McReynolds of the US Supreme Court, possessed a sharp legal mind but an equally daunting catalogue of prejudices. Anti-Semitic, hostile towards women and seemingly incapable of disguising his disdain for large sections of humanity, McReynolds emerges as a reminder that judicial office is no guarantee of judicial virtue.
The volume concludes with All’s Well That Begins Well, a meditation on the art of opening a judgment. Drawing on examples from across jurisdictions, Mehta shows how legal writing can be enlivened through literature, mythology, humour and narrative flair, while warning that “an unusual and unconventional opening becomes not a pleasure but an ordeal” when handled without skill.
Beneath the humour lies a simple insight: courts may be institutions devoted to reason, but they are inhabited by human beings—with all the virtues, vanities, prejudices, flaws and peculiarities. The result is a pair of engaging books that remind us that behind every robe, every judgment and every precedent stands an individual—capable of wisdom, folly, dignity and, not infrequently, unintended comedy.