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]

Law books from Hampshire County, Massachusetts.

See also

• Legal treatise
• Law dictionary

References

1. Abel, Richard L. (November 1973). "Law Books and Books about Law". Stanford Law Review. 26 (1): 175–228. doi:10.2307/1227916. JSTOR 1227916.
2. Twining, William; Miers, David (1999). How to do Things with Rules (4th ed.). London, Edinburgh, Dublin: Butterworths. p. 422. ISBN 0-406-90408-1.
3. Kent, James (1828). Commentaries on American Law. Vol. 3. New York: O. Halsted. p. 88 – via Google Books.
4. Scotsman, quoted in James Campbell Irons; Robert Dundonald Melville, eds. (1903). Treatise on the Law of Arbitration in Scotland. Edinburgh: William Green & Sons. p. 622. ISBN 9780414008205 – via Google Books.
5. Law Book News. Vol. 2. St. Paul, Minnesota: West Publishing Company. 1896. p. 84. ISBN 9780837708799 – via Google Books.
6. "Review of New Books: A Practical Treatise on the Law of Trusts and Trustees". The Literary Gazette; and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c. (1042). London. p. 348, col 2. 1837 – via Google Books.
7. Pagel, Scott B, ed. (1989). The Legal Bibliography: Tradition, Transitions and Trends. The Haworth Press. p. 1. ISBN 0-86656-932-4 – via Google Books.

Further reading

• Lawrence M Friedman and Stewart Macaulay (editors). Law and the Behavioural Sciences. Second Edition. Bobbs-Merrill. 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.