i begin by asking why it is customary for judges to give judgments at all. A judgment is not, after all, a necessary feature of formal dispute resolution. It played a small part in trial by battle or ordeal. And it might well be thought that parties who have endured the tedium and anguish of legal proceedings would wish to be spared yet another journey through country made distateful by gross over-familiarity. No doubt many are. But there are, I think, four – or perhaps four-and-a-half – good reasons why the giving of reasoned judgments has become a standard feature of ordinary judicial proceedings. The first reason is that, as the Court of Appeal said (with reference to an industrial tribunal decision) in Meek v. City of Birmingham District Council ,1 ‘The parties are entitled to be told why they have won or lost.’ And if, as so often happens, the winner has recovered less than he claimed, he is entitled to be told which parts of his claim have been held ill-founded or exaggerated. This reason calls for little discussion. But I seek support in the sense of dissatisfaction which many must have felt when, after a trial before lay justices in which there has been a lively conflict of evidence and a vigorous tussle on issues of law, and perhaps after a lengthy recess for consideration, the chairman returns and simply says ‘We find the case proved. Anything known?’ I would add, lest I be thought unfairly to criticise the most junior members of the judicial hierarchy, that somewhat similar sense may be felt when a petition for leave to appeal to the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords is dismissed with no reasons given, a feeling not mitigated when the decision which it is unsuccessfully …