Reviews
| Published date | 01 July 1999 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.t01-1-00229 |
| Date | 01 July 1999 |
REVIEWS
Paul Jackson and David C. Wilde (eds),The Reform of Property Law,
Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1997, xiii + 400 pp, hb £49.50.
This book is a collection of essays emanating from papers given at the inaugural
conference held at the Centre of Property Law at the University of Reading. As the
title of the collection indicates, the theme of the conference was the reform of
Property Law. That said, and as is probably to be expected, not all of the papers are
explicitly directed to reform, some being, instead, critical accounts of various areas
of law. Necessarily the collection is rather eclectic and the 19 papers vary both in
quality and in length.
The collection is formally divided into five parts although, in truth, there is a
bipartite divide, with one series of essays focusing on domestic law and the second
series taking an international perspective. The domestic section is divided into
three parts: General Considerations, Landlord and Tenant and Specific Issues; the
international section comprising a section on General Property Law and
International and Comparative essays on Land Law.
The opening essay is one which advocates reform, without needing any
legislative input. It is a cogent and persuasive case, by Peter Butt, for the use of
plain English. This is a topic which has divided the Magazine Editor and the
Precedents Editor of The Conveyancer, the former being a sceptic, the latter being
a convert (see P.H. Kenny [1997] Conv. 330 and 416; J.E. Adams [1998] Conv. 6. )
The third member of the editorial trio, the Casenotes Editor, found the argument
put by Professor Butt, and supported, in this volume, by Lisa Whitehouse (at
p160), to be highly convincing. Anyone who reads the two mortgage documents in
Professor Butt’s essay will find it difficult to argue against the campaign for plain
English. The point is well made that there is a qualitative difference between the
use of terms of art, such as fee simple, and mere jargon. The reforms to covenants
for title ushered in by the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1994
provide a good example of welcome reform taking the path of converting
gobbledegook into reasonably comprehensible language. While perhaps not as
glamorous a proposal for reform as the legislative redrafting of a problem area, the
encouragement of the use of documents which might mean something to those who
sign or receive them, is something to be welcomed as a means of reform without
the need for either legislative intervention or judicial creativity.
Also within the first part of the collection are discussions of the problems of
reforms initiated by the Law Commission. An insider’s view is provided by Trevor
Aldridge who gives an interesting account of the progress of the Landlord and
Tenant (Covenants) Act 1995 onto the statute book. He points to the difficulty of
implementing a seemingly straightforward task, the setting up of a separate
working party, the performance of which being bogged down by the niceties of
Whitehall protocol. Similar factors affect the prospects of legislation, the chances
of proposals being implemented being, to a fair extent, determined by which
Government Department is the sponsor of the Bill. The more Departments
involved, the greater the obstacles to the implementation of the relevant reform.
Moreover, when a number of different Departments are involved, there is a greater
prospect of further consultation and compromise, with the result that the final
ßThe Modern Law Review Limited 1999 (MLR 62:4, July). Published by Blackwell Publishers,
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 623
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