Geoffrey Samuel, LAW OF OBLIGATIONS Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd (www.e-elgar.co.uk), 2010. xxxix + 358 pp. ISBN 9781848447646. £89.95.

Document Cited authorities (1) Cited in Related
AuthorMartin Hogg
DOI10.3366/elr.2011.0011
Published date01 January 2011
Date01 January 2011
Pages149-151

This book is a challenging addition to a field in which English law is somewhat lacking in works treating of the modern “law of obligations” in the round. The historical reasons for the very late (in comparative terms) development of a taxonomic category of obligations in the Common Law has been well documented by David Ibbetson in his renowned work A Historical Introduction to the Law of Obligations (Oxford, 1999). Samuel's book does not focus primarily on the history (though there is reference to Roman and medieval English law throughout it), but rather presents a specific theory of the modern English law and legal culture, setting it in (or rather apart from) its European comparative context.

Those seeking to find in the work a plan for aligning the Common Law of obligations with the new European ius commune will be disappointed: Samuel is firmly within the camp of those promoting the distinctiveness of English law. He frequently voices his opposition to the idea that English law was ever really part of a European legal scientific community (as many would argue) or that it should be in the future. For Samuel, the Common Law “was formed within a feudal and not a Roman model” (68), and this history has created a culture which sets it apart from the civilian tradition, including the Civil Law category of a “law of obligations”.

Samuel's choice of that category for the title of his book appears essentially to have...

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