Just as it was the mark of old tyranny to stretch the law, so it will be the mark of new tyranny to make a law that can be stretched. To a great extent, at least, what used to be called common law used the language of common-sense. That is, it used words that were a little too popular to be entirely twisted out of their ordinary sense. Stealing could hardly be stretched to mean taking ten minutes of a man's time. Murder could hardly be made to include any sort of material inconvenience, that anybody might say had shortened his life. But if the law begins to deal with new scientific words, that do not as yet correspond to any popular and recognised things, we have no public protection against their being extended to touch anything or anybody.

-March 17, 1923, Illustrated London News