Which Road to the Past?—some Reflections on Legal History

It is not customary to commence a keynote address with caveats and disclaimers. However, this is the rare occasion when such qualifications are necessary because—if I may be permitted a crude pun—of the lack of qualifications of the speaker himself. This is not false modesty. It is very real. I know that I have often been referred to in the Singapore context as a legal historian.1 Clearly, the dearth of personnel has been a reason for what I consider to be an oversight. I have no professional qualifications—or formal training—in history (except for a couple of courses in, respectively, English and American legal history during my postgraduate studies).2 I have some interest—but only as a rank amateur. As a result, nothing I shall say will be of any significance to virtually all (if not all) of you. However, as I shall elaborate upon later, in the spirit of diversity which I believe the discipline of history in general and of legal history in particular represents, I trust that the somewhat different perspectives which are contained in this paper will be of some interest to you—if only because some thoughts might arise even from the mistakes I make. As I believe that the historical method is an integral part of the writing of legal history, I will commence this paper with a few (albeit amateurish) reflections on the nature of history in general and whether objectivity in history is possible in particular. I will then proffer—in the briefest of fashions—what I think a practical approach