Uncommon Law is a book by A. P. Herbert first published by Methuen in 1935. Its title is a satirical reference to the English common law. The book is an anthology of fictitious law reports first published in Punch as Misleading Cases in which Herbert explores, as he saw it, rather absurd aspects of the law, and upholds his civil liberties with the protagonist Albert Haddock, representing Herbert's point of view, taking many to court. It includes perhaps the best-known of these cases, The Negotiable Cow. Herbert himself said "Albert Haddock made his first public appearance, in Punch, in 1924. I have always understood that I invented him: but he has made some disturbing escapes into real life". Over his lifetime Herbert published five collections, entitled Misleading Cases in the Common Law, More Misleading Cases, Still More Misleading Cases, Codd's Last Case and Bardot M.P.?. Stray cases also appear in his collections of miscellaneous humorous essays, such as General Cargo. Virtually all the cases were assembled into two omnibus volumes, Uncommon Law in 1935 and More Uncommon Law in 1982. A shorter selection, Wigs at Work, appeared in 1966. The BBC successfully adapted them for television as three series of A P Herbert's Misleading Cases, with Roy Dotrice as Haddock and Alastair Sim as the judge, Mr Justice Swallow who has to unravel Haddock's logic.
Being a law reform activist, Herbert, through these "Misleading Cases", aired, initiated and sustained debate on various aspects of the law in which he saw need for change: copyright, divorce, defamation, liquor licensing, the police as agents provocateurs and rules of the road being some of the recurrent themes. At one point, Haddock turns himself into a limited company and insists to the court that he be called Haddock, Haddock, Haddock, Haddock Haddock & Co. because the copyright law states that copyright expires after seventy years but since a company being in law a person he objects to a winding-up order to shut the apparently defunct company because a company never dies and so its copyright can never expire. Every time the prosecution calls him Mr. Haddock he intervenes "You mean the Managing Director". Haddock argues that individuals should have the same rights as companies. The case is found in his favour, Haddock also suggesting to the prosecution that it is open to other authors to take the same tack as he has.
