Guus Duindam
2025 Temple Bar Scholar
The American Inns of Court’s Temple Bar Scholarship provided me with the unique opportunity to explore and experience legal London. Our time in London was remarkable: prominent barristers, solicitors, judges, and Justices were all incredibly generous with their time, answering our questions—and allowing us a degree of access it is hard to imagine foreign visitors would receive in the United States. The program’s monthlong duration, including the three weeks we were embedded in a barrister’s chambers and at the Supreme Court, enabled us to see the United Kingdom’s legal system and culture not merely as visiting outsiders, but also as momentary participants. That was a rewarding experience, and it raised many interesting comparative questions about the relative merits of our respective systems’ differing rules. The program was thus doubly enriching, at once introducing us to a new and different legal culture and allowing us to engage more thoughtfully with our own.
The program’s first week served as our introduction to the UK legal system’s key institutions, with the Four Inns of Court—the bar associations and legal-education centers that up-and-coming barristers must join before they can be ‘called to the bar’—serving as our base of operations. Our many visits and lunches at the Inns were a special pleasure, and they occasionally took on a time-travel like character, such as when we attended events in Lincoln’s Inn’s Old Hall (of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House fame), or ate lunch in Middle Temple’s Great Hall, where Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night premiered. Incredibly, Lincoln’s Inn has consistent written records of its operations dating back to the 1400s—early portions of which (we were told) are concerned predominantly with the pupils of the day stealing rabbits from the nearby Royal Warren.
In learning about the key legal institutions of England and Wales, we met with a great many legal luminaries, including the Lady Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls, the President of the Supreme Court, and prominent ‘benchers’ of the Inns of Court. Each was more interesting and generous in answering our questions than the last. In our conversations, the importance of a neutral and independent judiciary became a recurrent theme. England and Wales achieve judicial independence by way of an appointment system run by independent commissions separated from the political branches. That system—combined with the fact that the English courts are tasked with resolving highly political questions less frequently than their American counterparts—means even experienced barristers often do not know the political preferences of Supreme Court Justices. Discussions about the ways courts can achieve and maintain political independence (as well as public trust in such independence) took on special salience at a time when the rule of law faces significant threats in the United States.
In our second and third weeks, we had the privilege of spending time with two barrister’s “chambers”—for me, these were One Essex Court and Enterprise Chambers. Barristers at both chambers were incredibly welcoming, and observing their work was a great way to get a sense of the practicalities of legal practice in the U.K. These two weeks helped make concrete the consequences of systemic differences that would otherwise have seemed theoretical. Consider that, in part due to the U.K.’s fee-shifting system, litigants only very rarely file motions to dismiss (“motions to strike”), even though such motions are expected in nearly every case in the United States. Or that the lack of a civil jury means there is effectively no (civil) hearsay objection, while attorneys may admit documents into evidence during argument and without a sponsoring witness.
Interestingly, even some similarly phrased rules have evolved to mean substantially different things in our respective jurisdictions. For example, both jurisdictions prohibit witness coaching, but barristers are far more limited in the ways they may permissibly prepare their witnesses. That in turn means that barristers try as much as possible to build their case on documentary evidence, to avoid having to rely on witnesses who will be unprepared for cross-examination. Several barristers told me they often build their affirmative case on cross-examination using their opponents’ witnesses, rather than their own. Similarly, both jurisdictions require experts to maintain scientific neutrality, but the U.K. courts require experts to work together with their counterparts and create a joint report explaining the areas of agreement (which judges expect to be significant). Combine such differences with the fact that trial lawyers introduce their direct evidence through pre-written witness statements rather than through direct testimony (indeed, direct examinations effectively do not happen in civil trials), and you get a dramatically different mode of (civil) trial advocacy. It was fascinating to explore that advocacy under the guidance of experienced barristers, and to consider what we might learn from it here.
We spent most of our last week at the Supreme Court, observing a three-day (!) oral argument in a fascinating and important human-rights case. It was an incredible privilege to hear an argument with some of the nation’s most notable oral advocates, and to discuss it with the Supreme Court’s Justices and their Judicial Assistants. Substantively, it was especially valuable to see a domestic court grapple seriously with precedents from the international courts applying principles of international law. Procedurally, the case was a departure from American practice as well—for one thing, it effectively came to the Court as a request for an advisory opinion. Of particular interest, moreover, was the fact that the petitioner sought a ruling overturning one of the Supreme Court’s earlier decisions on the same issue. We thus saw the Court in a case where it had to contend not only with difficult questions of substantive law, but also with addressing the weight that should be given to stare decisis.
My entire experience in London was fascinating and rewarding, and I am deeply grateful to all who made it possible. I hope to return to the city soon and often, and to see many of the barristers and solicitors we met again—along, of course, with my wonderful co-scholars.