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C Proctor, MANN ON THE LEGAL ASPECT OF MONEY Oxford: Oxford University Press (www.oup.com), 7th edn, 2012. lxix + 914 pp. ISBN 9780199609178. £225.

Document Cited authorities 1 Cited in Related
Vincent
Date01 May 2014
DOI10.3366/elr.2014.0220
Published date01 May 2014
AuthorJ Fitchen
Pages303-305

The classic status of the first edition of F A Mann's work The Legal Aspect Of Money has long been beyond doubt: in 1939 it established in English legal literature an important legal subject that that had previously scarcely been considered by the English court but would, in the financial turbulence of the years following the Second World War, increasingly come before that court and others. Mann's work was both deep and systematic, rich in reference to practice and principle from other legal systems but always grounded upon a pragmatic and practical view of the private and public international laws from which important aspects of this subject are drawn. Mann's work was frequently referred to with judicial approval in the published law reports, a quick check on Westlaw reveals 11 such reported cases up to the date of the fifth edition. The impressive nature of Mann's achievement, regardless of having arrived with spouse in London in 1933 as a German refugee from the Nazi Regime, is indicated by the words provided by the Author's son in the foreword he contributed to the sixth (and first entirely posthumous) edition of the book that his father had conceived: “The book was started in the summer of 1936, written in a foreign language and completed when my father was aged thirty. By then he had established a law practice; completed the LLM degree in 1936 at the London School of Economics; had children in 1935 and 1937; and conceived and written the book”. F A Mann did not however seek to rest on his undoubted academic laurels: he authored many more excellent and influential legal articles, an activity he combined with working at the highest levels of legal practice as a solicitor (from 1958 for the firm Herbert Smith). Today few academic or practicing lawyers would read this catalogue of activity and success without wondering how, despite obvious adversity, so much could be achieved outside the confines of a university or other institution specifically devoted to legal research while engaged in commercial legal practice.

In 1991 F A Mann was discovered in death surrounded by proofs of what would be the fifth edition of his influential and indispensible book, The Legal Aspect of Money. As is evident from the present review, the book survived its author: the fifth edition appeared in 1992, a sixth edition was presented in 2005 and the seventh edition, the subject of this review, was published in late 2012. Both the sixth and seventh editions of The Legal Aspect...

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