Law book

A law book is a book about law.

It is possible to make a distinction between "law books" on the one hand, and "books about law" on the other.^[1] This distinction is "useful".^[2] A law book is "a work of legal doctrine".^[1] It consists of "law talk", that is to say, propositions of law.^[2]

"The first duty of a law book is to state the law as it is, truly and accurately, and then the reason or principle for it as far as it is known".^[3] The "first requisite in a law-book is perfect accuracy".^[4] A "law book is supposed to state what the law is rather than what it is not".^[5] "One great desideratum in a law book is facility of reference".^[6]

A "list of law books and related materials" is a legal bibliography.^[7]

See also

• Legal treatise
• Law dictionary

References

• Lawrence M Friedman and Stewart Macaulay (editors). Law and the Behavioural Sciences. Second Edition. Bobbs-Merill. 1977. Pages 21 to 26.
• Twining, William. Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School. The Hamlyn Lectures Forty-Sixth Series. Published under the auspices of the Hamlyn Trust. Sweet & Maxwell. Stevens & Sons. London. 1994. ISBN 0 421 53280 7. Chapters 1 and 5. Digitized copy from the University of Exeter.

1. Richard L Abel, "Law Books and Books about Law" (1973) 26 Stanford Law Review 175 JSTOR
2. William Twining and David Miers. How to do Things with Rules. Fourth Edition. Butterworths. London, Edinburgh, Dublin. 1999. ISBN 0 406 90408 1. p 422.
3. 3 Kent's Commentaries 88
4. Scotsman, quoted in Irons and Melville, Treatise on the Law of Arbitration in Scotland, W Green, 1903, p 622, Google Books
5. Law Book News. F B Rothman. 1896. Vol 2. p 84. Google Books.
6. The Literary Gazette; and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c. for the Year 1837. London. 1837. p 348. col 2. Digitized copy from Google Books.
7. Pagel, Scott B (editor). The Legal Bibliography: Tradition, Transitions and Trends. The Haworth Press. 1989. ISBN 0 86656 932 4. Page 1. Digitized copy from Google Books.

External links