H. L. A. Hart and Lord Devlin 

The past has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found pessimists more amusing than optimists and failures more attractive than successes. I do not say that my preferences are based upon universal principles or that everyone should share them; in any case I should not want to live in a world of mental clones of myself, even if it were possible. I merely describe my own preferences as they happen to be.

Now that my personal past is longer than my personal future, it is perhaps not surprising that I tend to dwell on, and even to live in, that past. The controversies of my youth seem to me more significant than those of today, purer and more disinterested as it were, though this of course is an illusion. Muddy water in a jar always grows clearer as the particles settle. Time sediments.

There were three public controversies that took place just before my early adulthood whose echoes were still audible when I reached the age of intellection. Again, I do not claim for them that they were the most important of their time in any objective historical sense, or that their outcome decided the fate of mankind, though in fact the outcomes did affect millions in a practical way. These are not the reasons why I return to them. Rather, there is a comfort in old battles that there