The citadel of justice is solemn and serious by design. But this book looks beyond that façade, bringing together a series of intriguing and surprising episodes that will appeal not only to lawyers and judges, but to non-legal readers as well.

In The Lawful and the Awful, Tushar Mehta takes the reader into the lesser-known corners of the legal world, where personality presses against principle and the law reveals a side of itself rarely seen.

Drawing on real cases from courts across the world, these pages recount judges who brandished loaded pistols inside courtrooms, penned poetry instead of judgments, or pronounced sentences from improbable places; the sharp wit and wisdom of the inimitable Justice Scalia; and memorable instances of the British art of courtroom humour.

Written with wit, measured sarcasm, and the practised eye of a courtroom insider, these essays do not seek either to scandalize or to sermonize. They simply remind us that the citadel of justice is not always as solemn as it appears—and that the line between what is lawful and what is awful can sometimes be thinner than we might like to believe. This blurring of the line is what makes the law all the more interesting and fascinating.