Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School - College of Social ...

The Law Library
A good introduction to computer information retrieval systems for law is David
Stott, Legal Research (1993), Chap. 5.
E. H. Cordeaux, Bodleian Law Library: Legal Literature of the United Kingdom.
(1974), p. 1.
cf. Theodore Roosevelt's distinction between books and instruments of a profession
such as law books, medical books and cookery books, which "are not
properly 'books' at all, they come in the category of time-tables, telephone directories,
and other useful agencies of civilized life." T. Roosevelt, An Autobiography
(1913) at p. 360.
Cordeaux, op. cit.
Above Chap. 1 at pp. 12-13.
e.g. Jean Dane and Philip Thomas, How to use a law library, (2nd ed., 1987),
Peter Clinch, Using a law library: a student's guide to legal research skills (1992).
Law librarians rightly claim that a few hours are not enough to train students in
research skills; but such introductions should enable the beginner to overcome
initial fears and to start to use the library.
The classic attack on lawyers' mystification through "jargonization" is by Bentham:
Rationale of Judicial Evidence (1827) Book VIII, Chap. XVII.
See below Chap. 7 and 8.
See generally, David Miers and Alan Page, Legislation (2nd ed., 1990), HDTWR
Chap. 9 and 10. For the sake of convenience librarians often place legislation
close to official reports of law-making bodies, such as Hansard's Parliamentary
Debates, Journals of the House of Commons, and Parliamentary Papers.
For an illustration of the amount and range of new statutes enacted by Parliament
in a five year period (1985-89) see HDTWR at pp. 323-324.
See further HDTWR, passim.
Blackstone's attitude to legislation was quite complex, see David Lieberman,
"Blackstone's Science of Legislation" (1989) Law and Justice 61.
F. Ellsworth, Law on the Midway (1977), pp. 68-73.
G. Calabresi, A Common Law for the Age of Statutes (1982); for a comparison
of English and American approaches to legislation see P. S. Atiyah and R. S.
Summers, Form and Substance in Anglo-American Law (1987) Chap. 11.
James Kent, 1 Commentaries on American Law (1830) (11th ed. 1866) para.
496.
Karl Llewellyn, "Case Law", 3 Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (1931) p. 449.
In 1987 Westlaw contained over 40,000 decisions issued by Federal Courts and
over 80,000 issued by State Courts, of which about 60,000 had full opinions.
"There have now been over three million cases published in [the United States],
and most of these can be found in any law school library". M. Cohen, R. Berring,
and C. Olson, How To Find the Law (9th ed., 1989) p. 2. The availability of
transcripts of unreported cases on Lexis threatens to make over-supply of precedents
an increasingly serious problem in the UK.
For a general introduction to case law see HDTWR Chap. 7 and 8.
Adapted from N. Dowling, E. Patterson and R. Powell, Materials for Legal Method
(2nd ed., 1952), pp. 34-35.
The early pages are "furniture": a list of reporters (all barristers), a list of all the
judges of the superior courts of England and Wales; the correct citation of the
volume ([1991] 4 All ER) and of the four major works of reference that are regularly
referred to in the reports: Halsbury's Laws of England, Halsbury's Statutes
of England and Wales, the Digest, and Halsbury's Statutory Instruments. There
is an index of cases reported in this volume and a Digest of these cases.
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