REVIEWS
| Published date | 01 July 1989 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1989.tb02616.x |
| Date | 01 July 1989 |
REVIEWS
DICTXONNAIRE ENCYCLOPiDIQUE
DE
THiOYE
ET
DE
SOCIOLOGIE
DU
DROIT. Sous la direction de
ANDRE-JEAN
ARNAUD.
[Paris:
Librairie GBndrale de Droit et de Jurisprudence. Bruxelles:
E.
Story-Scientia, 1988. xxiii and 487pp., hard cover; no price
given.]
MANUALE
DI TEORIA GENERALE
DEL
DIRIT~O.
By
MARIO
JON
and
ANNA PINTORE. [Torino: G. Giappichelli editore, 1988.
ix
and
401pp., soft cover, LL36,OOO.l
Two
British professors of jurisprudence, Neil MacCormick and William
Twining, have recently remarked that
“Our subject conspicuously lacks any counterpart to the encyclopaedic
guides that exist for English literature or music or political thought. Jur-
isprudence has no Grove or Kobb6 or even a Quentin Skinner or a Mar-
garet Drabble.
If
such a work were to exist its subject-matter would
resemble not
so
much the tip of an iceberg, as
a
motley collection of flot-
sam and treasures fished out of a turbulent and murky ocean of discourse
and debate.”
There is, prima facie, a certain irony about this remark, given that, in at least
one sense, jurisprudence is a particularly stagnant legal discipline. In many
areas
of
legal research, accepted paradigms can change almost overnight.
Legal principles not only come and go; they are supplemented, modified,
qualified. The academic lawyer needs to keep abreast of the latest develop-
ments, and
so
we have special sources of legal information.
But
in jurispru-
dence,
lexis
and the like are of little use-possibly because there are no “legal
developments” in this subject in the same way as there are in, say, tort law or
administrative law. The same jurisprudential themes and principles are dis-
cussed by academics decade upon decade, in such a manner as could never be
creditably imitated in other legal disciplines.
Yet, one might ask,
if
this is indeed the case, why is it that two professors
of jurisprudence should believe that an encyclopaedic guide to their subject
could consist of nothing better than
“a
motley collection of flotsam and trea-
sures?” Given that the study of jurisprudence is not weighed down by a wel-
ter
of
cases, statutes, working party reports and the like-given, that is, that
jurisprudence does not change in the same manner as does substantive law-
why should it not be considered ripe for
a
concerted attempt at categorisation
and compartmentalisation?
It should be noted, in answer to this, that certain attempts have
of
late
been made to collate contemporary research in jurisprudence. And it would
be wrong to suggest that it is a subject without reference books, even if these
books are not particularly encyclopaedic. It is, furthermore, interesting to
note that one
of
the professors whom we have quoted felt able, in spite
of
his
professed scepticism, to contribute to the
Dictionnaire encyclopkdique de
thkorie et de sociologie du droit,
compiled under the direction of Andr6-Jean
Arnaud. Perhaps the sincerity of his scepticism should be doubted.
The
Dictionnaire
is a massive and ambitious work. In a fairly lengthy pre-
577
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