Richard Oerton

Richard Oerton (born 1936) spent his professional life as a lawyer, working in private practice, in legal publishing, at the Law Commission (for 13 years), briefly and unhappily in the Treasury Solicitor's Department, and finally as a consultant with Solicitors and Parliamentary Agents in Westminster. He wrote or edited legal textbooks and wrote other books ("Who is the Criminal?", "'A Lament for the law Commission") and a lot of articles, book reviews and letters to legal and other journals and newspapers. He's been a member of the Howard League for Penal Reform for well over half a century and he agitated against capital punishment and for the legalisation of homosexual behaviour - much to the disgust of most of his fellow solicitors.

Closest to his heart are his three books produced in retirement, the first two about what we call free will ("The Nonsense of Free Will" and "The Cruelty of Free Will') and the third - "Go, go, go, Said the Bird" - which looks afresh at the non-existence of free will but aims much more widely, exposing other realities which human beings find unacceptable. He argues strongly that our species would be all the better for accepting them. He doesn't expect to be remembered at all, but if he were to be remembered for anything he would like it to be for these books.