Precedent-setting move puts law on YouTube

THEY said it would never happen – but those weighty and well-thumbed tomes called session cases have finally collided with the YouTube generation.

A series of five short films – Session Cases: Law Reporting In Scotland – were launched last week with a stellar legal cast extolling the virtues of the elegant volumes and their huge significance.

The films – commissioned by the Scottish Council of Law Reporting and made by Muckle Hen Productions, and primarily designed to introduce session cases and their use to law students – can be viewed online.

However, the films have a wider function in terms of explaining the background to the development of session cases – and, in so doing, the development of Scottish law itself.

The five films – which run to an average of around six minutes – use the celebrated case of Donoghue v Stevenson (the decomposing snail found in a bottle of ginger beer in a small Paisley café in 1928) to explain the history of law reporting and the significance of precedent.

They move on to describing the anatomy of a law report, citing such reports in court, and the influence of the internet on accessing session cases.

One of the contributors to the films, Justice Cromwell of the Supreme Court of Canada, says: “The computer age has revolutionised research and the availability of legal materials … and given greater access to decisions in other countries.”

Other notable legal figures interviewed for the films include Lady Dorrian, Lord Eassie, Lord Kinclaven, Dorothy Bain QC and many more. Clips of a wide range of contributors are intelligently used and segue with generic shots – including a black and white reconstruction of the Donoghue case, complete with 1920s-style outfits.

The significance of the Donoghue v Stevenson case [David Stevenson was the manufacturer of the ginger beer] is explained in the film on precedent. The viewer is reminded that the case did not result in a unanimous decision by the Law Lords, although it is the lead judgment by Lord Atkin and his ‘neighbour principle’ of duty of care that has done much to give the case its celebrated status.

The film, however, also reminds viewers that precedent is not fixed and unyielding. In one of his thoughtful contributions, Lord Eassie says: “The difficulty with precedent is that if you apply it too strictly, you cannot develop the law – so there has to be some inbuilt flexibility.”

The films were launched last week and Anthony Kinahan, secretary at the Scottish Council of Law Reporting, says he is happy with the finished product.

“Universities were keen to have these films for use by their students on the Introduction to Legal Materials course,” he explains. “There is also a lot of interest from law lecturers and law librarians.

“It became fairly evident as the project unfolded that people have an understanding of law in terms of legislation but less so in terms of what goes on in court in terms of precedent. That gave us a good hook on which to hang the films. Essentially the films are about how courts develop law and how precedent is established. Law reports are a mechanism for transmitting court decisions and passing them on to people, including those who might find them useful in preparing their own cases.”

Kinahan says of the choice of the Donoghue v Stevenson case: “It is probably the most famous legal case in the world and absolutely brilliant to hang the films on, especially in terms of precedent and how it works.”

Andrew Macintosh of Muckle Hen is a law graduate, and Kinahan says this helped in getting to grips with the subject matter. However, there were still challenges. “It wasn’t easy to define the parameters of the films themselves and how they might unfold, while the interviews were totally unscripted. The challenge was getting a range of questions that would produce interesting responses.”

This certainly worked and the interviews are very well used. It helped that many of the contributors were so well versed in composing compelling messages for court audiences.

Dorothy Bain QC describes elegantly how the snail case “captures the imagination”, while James Wolffe QC says of precedent: “What it gives us is a store of the way previous cases have been decided.”

Kinahan says that in a way, it is not surprising that the session cases translated well to film: “You look at the rows of law reports in a library and all human life is there. Law reports reflect what is going on in life and society at the time the reports were written. The average Scottish person has a fairly low awareness of how law is made and developed – and hopefully these films will do something about that.”

www.youtube.com/user/ sessioncases