Lord Atkin, the snail and the foreigner: loving the neighbour and oppressing the alien

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Donoghue v Stevenson, Lord Atkin in the majority perceived the Christian principle of loving one’s neighbour to require a duty of reasonable care to the neighbour, who was [a person who is] ‘so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called in question’. In Liversidge v Anderson his Lordship held in dissent that ‘In England amidst the clash of arms the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace. It has always been one of the pillars of freedom, one of the principles of liberty for which, on recent authority, we are now fighting, that the judges are no respecters of persons, and stand between the subject and any attempted encroachments on his liberty by the executive, alert to see that any coercive action is justified in law’. Lord Atkin was a practising Christian, and both statements appear to have biblical roots. As no-one seems to have done before, this paper brings an exegetical focus to those roots to see whether or not they provide support for Lord Atkin’s approach in each case.