Recent Book: The Better Half: Police Wife
| Published date | 01 July 1975 |
| Date | 01 July 1975 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X7504800309 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
of legal reform.
At
best it must be regarded as legal
reform
by implica-
tion.
It
is also
not
clear as to the potential extent of the post 1957 rule.
Must
the
deceased have offered some
provocation?
What
would
the
court's
attitude be if a wife provoked a
husband
beyond
endurance
and
he killed
indiscriminately astranger?
The
great emphasis on putting the
matter
to
the
jury
makes
the
formulation ot precise rules difficult. Indeed the whole
subjeot seems now to have a somewhat vague ambit, difficult to define with
any real precision,
RECENT BOOKS
AN OLD FRIEND
SIR
RUPERT
CROSS
and
MISS
NANCY
WILKINS:
Outline
of
the
Law
of
Evidence (4th edition). Butterworths. £4 (post free).
Both the "ageing academic"
and
the
"very
newly rledged barrister"
are now
more
than
10 years older
than
when they so described them-
selves inl the preface to the first
edition )f this work.
The
present
edition bears no
mark
of senility
on the
part
of the
former
or
loss
of f.reshness on the
part
of
the
latter
with
the
passing years.
The
dual
authorship
points to
an
ideal
relationship between instructor
and
pupil,
for
it originated in Miss
Wilkins's disappointment, when
reading for the bar, in finding
that
there was no
book
on evidence
corresponding with Cross
and
Jones's Introduction to Criminal
Law.
This
led to the recognition of
the
need for a
book
on evidence
bearing asimilar relationship to
Cross on Evidence
and
giving a
concise
account
of
the
law
without
references to academic literature or
decisions
from
foreign jurisdictions.
For
the police evidence is, of
course, asubject of central im-
portance
and
candidates sitting
for
examinations as a step in
promotion
have
welcomed
the
production of a
book
which deals with the subject
at depth
and
in greater detail
than
those once available to them.
It
would be difficult to imagine awork
better
adapted
to the purpose.
Since the
appearance
of the
third
edition there has been only one
statute - the Civil Evidence Act
1972 - specifically dealing with the
subject,
but
there
have
been a fair
number
of judicial decisions, some
of them concerned with
important
points of criminal law. R. v. Ed-
of
proof
shifted to the accused
under
statute), R. v. Hogan [1974]
Q.B. 398 (estoppel in criminal pro-
ceedings) and Boardman v, Director
of
Public Prosecutions [1974]
3W.L.R. 673 (similar faots evi-
dence), may be cited
among
them.
These
are, of course, incorporated
in the text, and the opportunity has
been taken to effect some reorgani-
zation of the book.
The
work is not, and never has
been, a cut down version of the
larger volumes with which
the
first
named
author
is associated.
It
has
been
from
the beginning a fresh
work
planned to deal with the
situation above described. As a
means of instruction to members
of the
force,it
has proved
to
be
of great value
and
will no
doubt
continue to do so.
F.
GRAHAM
GLOVER
THE BETTER HALF
PAT
JAMES
and
MARTHA
NELSON:
Police Wife. Charles C. Thomas, Spring-
field, Illinois, U.S.A. $11.50.
This
book
is intended
for
the
to 'a policeman, Police
Wife
is
an
wives
and
future wives of police engaging combination of materials
officers; it is designed to
acquaint
drawn from published works, inter-
them
with the situations
and
stresses views with police officers
and
their
they will
encounter
and
to
share
the
families, personal experience
and
strategies
and
solutions devised by commonsense. Although Ithere is
more
experienced law enforcement nothing new or startling here,
the
wives.
woman
who
is or is
about
to be-
Written by a veteran
author
and
come a police wife may benefit not
her
daughter, who is herself married only
from
the
descriptions of
the
July 1975 254
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