Since 1991 I have been writing a fortnightly column in these pages about unpersuasive advocates, injudicious judges, legal entertainment and unusual litigation. A collection of those pieces, I Have to Move My Car, edited to remove repetition, inaccuracy and plain stupidity, has now been published.

In the legal world that I report, advocates inform judges that their closing submissions will not take long because (as counsel told an American federal court) “I would like to move my car before 5 o’clock”; they respond to criticism by a United States Supreme Court judge during a hearing that their written argument was perfunctory by explaining, “Your Honour must realise, I am a very busy man”; and they tell judges critical of their failure to address a relevant appeal court authority that “I try not to read that many cases, your Honour”. Lawyers are reassured by such disasters that our own performance could have been so much worse.

The legal world described in my columns also features judges whose conduct calls to mind the wisdom of Mr Justice Featherstone’s wife, Marigold, in one of John Mortimer’s Rumpole stories. She tells him: “You’ve got absolutely no judgment. That must come as something of a drawback in your profession.”

I collect judges like the one sitting in the American court in the 1970s who responded to an application by a lawyer of Japanese extraction who requested additional time to prepare for a trial, “And how much time did you give us at Pearl Harbor?”; the Michigan judge who agreed to reduce the bail bond required of a defendant on condition that he had “his hair cut in a fashion similar” to that of the judge; and Judge Richard M. Jones, of Omaha, Nebraska, who was removed from office as a county court judge by the supreme court of Nebraska in 1998 for disciplinary offences that included signing court papers as “Mickey Mouse”, setting bail bonds for “a zillion pengos” and setting off fireworks in a colleague’s office, the state supreme court being unimpressed by his mitigation that he was just “venting”.

These prize exhibits are American, but many of the judges and lawyers who appear in my columns are from other countries, including (on occasions) the UK. The European Convention on Human Rights, as applied by the Human Rights Act 1998, requires that the law must be certain and predictable. My legal examples of the unusual, the unexpected and the simply incredible happily demonstrate that such a goal remains well out of reach. The legal fantasies created by the fertile imaginations of writers such as Beachcomber and A. P. Herbert cannot compete with reality.

I collect legal curiosities like others collect stamps, Air Miles or Impressionist paintings. My book has no characters other than idiosyncratic judges and maverick lawyers. It contains no plot other than the continuing saga of the common law as it follows the route, as described by Lord Justice Diplock, of “a maze and not a motorway” that involves regular detours past all sorts of unexpected sights. The chapters serve no purpose other than entertainment, save to provide reassurance on two matters. The book confirms, if there were otherwise any doubt, that the law is applied by human beings some of whom suffer from all the prejudices, vanities and irrationalities common to our species. As King Lear observes: “Change places; and handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?” And my book should also reassure judges and lawyers, as they toil in the dusty volumes of the law reports, or scroll down austere legal pages on the internet, that if they persevere they may just find something amusing. Fortunately for this column, judges, lawyers and clients are no more capable today than they were in 1991 of avoiding bizarre statements and actions.

The danger in such a collection of columns is that the reader can wrongly be led to believe that the exotic, and sometimes poisonous, specimens collected there are typical of an environment that also contains a large number of lawyers and judges who are modest and decent human beings who respect high ethical standards and who play an important part in the promotion of justice. I am, I hope, a fair-minded judge, able to appreciate and give credit for the many positive aspects of our legal system, and the people within it who devote themselves to the welfare of others.

There are many law books about constructive trusts, the Perpetuities and Accumulations Act 1964 and the rule in Foss v Harbottle. I Have to Move My Car is not one of them. Writing these fortnightly columns has been, and continues to be, a great pleasure. I hope you enjoy reading (or rereading) them.

The author is a practising barrister at Blackstone Chambers in the Temple, a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and a crossbencher in the House of Lords. This is an edited version of the introduction to I Have to Move My Car, published last week by Hart Publishing (£10.99).

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