The Ubiquitous Book Review

If case-notes are considered to be a lowly form of legal literature, book reviews could come even lower. Law book-reviews, whenever themselves the subject of legal commentary, are seen to be done badly. Lacking the discipline of the legal opinion, law-book reviewing ranges between the pedantic and the perfunctory, with room for indulgence in the personal and the polemic. There are no established techniques for law-book reviewing. There are no criteria for critical appreciation. Law-book reviewing, which lacks any discernable ground-rules, proceeds intuitively without reference to explicit standards or established expertise. This is odd because the literary tradition of book-reviewing was first established by a lawyer whose concept was that of putting books on legal trial. The literary review is thus strongly grounded in legal method. The present shortcomings of the law-book review denote not only literary shortcomings but also failures of legal method. The conventional law review provides the evidence, no less than it carries much of the blame for the decline in law-book reviewing. One obvious standard of reference for the declining law-book review continues to be the higher forms of literary review. This standard calls for renewed interest in law and literature.