Basil Markesinis's father was a prominent Greek politician of Venetian ancestry. His British born mother was from a Greek family, which had escaped to Britain in the 1820s. For Markesinis himself, a doctorate in Paris at a young age was followed by another in Cambridge. Although his Cambridge doctorate was on public law, he moved to English private law before establishing his reputation, in the main, as a comparative lawyer.

This rich and fascinating background makes his current book—‘An Extended Essay’—all the more valuable. His subject is a comparison of the different approaches in art, literature and law to notions of good and evil. To anticipate, while Markesinis finds some diametrically opposed views, he is also able to unearth interlinking strands of thought across disciplines, in the literature in different cultures and at different periods of time. This reflects his approach to comparative law, where he has long been a proponent of the notion that there are similarities and convergences despite apparent differences.

The figures Markesinis uses from art for evil are Mozart's Don Giovanni, Goethe's Faust and Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. From law there comes a 17-year-old murderer, a recidivist child molester and an intruding journalist. It is a surprise that no one has ever tackled the subject previously when pictorial art and literature have regularly dealt with the themes of good and evil, crime and punishment, and these are also a staple diet of the law. Markesinis finds that in these evil characters are sometimes impressive, even attractive qualities. Satan's ambition is revealed as a vice, because Milton generally portrays it as aggrandisement and ego. But is not ambition to be desired, asks Markesinis, where personal advancement can lead to societal spin-offs? Just as ambition in art has led to what we admire, so, too, with life. By contrast with art, good and bad in law are generally common, dull and easily forgotten.

Although there are similarities in their treatment of good and bad, Markesinis underlines the divergences between art and law. With punishment, for example, the villain in art can expect severity, indeed unyielding punishment. Thus in Milton's Paradise Lost God makes clear to Adam that, Adam having transgressed God's sole command, ‘inevitably thou shalt die’. By contrast punishment in modern Western law adapts to human frailty and accepts pleas of mitigation. Changes in morality are also reflected in modern Western law. Markesinis quotes the German Constitutional Court that punishment must accord with human dignity and therefore can only rely on the present state of knowledge and cannot rightly demand to be considered valid timelessly. While Dante places those in hell in different circles, compared with modern law the punishment of divine justice in art lumps all offenders together. The fixed sanctions of the Pentateuch contrast with the balancing of competing interests in modern law.

A familiar area of Markesinis' scholarship, free speech and privacy, are used to illustrate his thesis, along with matters such as release on parole and consumer protection law. Markesinis notes that the European consumerist movement has resulted in a degree of harmonization of different contract rules in Germany and England. In relation to the law on abortion, gay relationships and gay adoption, he says that the democratic process has ushered in changes, notwithstanding the harsh language of religious and other moral texts. He notes, however, that in sections of the United States and the Middle East religious ideas have managed to harness the political process to its cause, transmitting their inherent rigidity to living law. Judicial innovation in modern Western law is generally smoother, because of the lawyers' need to convince. That means avoiding sudden breaks with the past or disrupting established practice.

From the bad, Markesinis moves to the good. From literature he takes the example of flawless hero Aeneas, in Virgil, and Corneille's characterization of El Cid. Thus he explores questions about duty, honour and love from the conflicts between the lovers Cid and Chimene. Markesinis uses the contrast between the different editions of Corneille's play in the 1637 and 1682 to illustrate his general theme that justice appears to be less satisfactory when influenced by ideas, religious or political, which are conceived in absolute terms. Adding flaws to heroes is one method used in literature to enhance their attractiveness.

Turning to law, Markesinis continues with his theme that good and bad are often relative, in the eye of the beholder. Pontius Pilate's washing his hands and delivering Jesus to the High Priest and death, can be seen as cowardice in avoiding a risky decision, as anxious indecision or as an invention of the Gospel writers to make Christianity more acceptable to the Roman Empire. Markesinis also contends that modern justice, despite its shortcomings, satisfies societal demands better than the justice of earlier ages. He notes that the clever judge will use the techniques of the artist to draw together the facts in such a way that the result reached seems inevitable. Lord Denning's decision in Miller v Jackson Footnote ¹ is given as an example. Just as artists expose different dimensions of things, so modern law strives for balance and compromise, rather than absolutes. Judicial resolution of problems turns not only on the application of rules but on judicial mentality, outlook, training, wider political beliefs and values. Judges vary greatly, however, from the humanity of Lord Denning to the cold and self-centred Justice Holmes.

Markesinis has never been an academic to stand aside from the real world. While drawing attention to the undoubted blemishes of our system of justice, Markesinis defends it against the un-thinking tabloid and political critics. None of this means that Markesinis argues for an absence of values. He is scathing about one of the heroes of United States law, Justice Holmes, his legal greatness being accompanied by a degree of moral deficiency and lack of compassion.

This book deserves the widest of audiences. Not everyone will agree with the views expressed. Religion gets a bad press, modern politicians are not favoured—‘a politician's mind finely subverts everything to a political calculation and expedience’. Markesinis draws here on having been born and bred in a political family, operating in two of the most politically minded countries in Europe, Italy and Greece, for many generations. However, that assertion could be said to overlook the combination in all politicians of calculation and altruism, which varies over time and with the individual. Judges are not necessarily always to be praised: thus among various points Markesinis says that the increase in volume of legal material and other factors mean that the modern form of judgment is less artistically attractive. Although one may take a different view from Markesinis on all these issues, one cannot but see in his book a validation of his claim that lawyers would benefit from studying both comparative law and literature to enable them to develop their human and humanitarian instincts—these qualities, in practice, will often be of much more use for the lawyer than a detailed legal knowledge of any one system.