It has been a general rule for drawing deeds and other legal documents from the earliest times, which one is taught when one first becomes a pupil to… - Colin Blackburn, Baron Blackburn

The rule of our law is that the immediate cause, the causa proxima, and not the remote cause, is to be looked at: for, as Lord Bacon says: "It were infinite for the law to judge the causes of causes and their impulsions one of another; therefore it contenteth itself with the immediate cause, and judgeth of acts by that, without looking to any further degree."

I do not think there can be the smallest doubt that to sit judicially on Sunday on any business would be indecent and improper, and ought never to be done if it can be helped.

Whenever there is a real likelihood that the Judge would, from kindred or any other cause, have a bias in favour of one of the parties, it would be very wrong in him to act, and we are not to be understood to say that where there is a real bias of this sort this Court would not interfere.