Whither the Law and the Law Books? From Prescription to Possibility
| Date | 01 June 2012 |
| Published date | 01 June 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2012.00582.x |
| Author | Roger Brownsword |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 39, NUMBER 2, JUNE 2012
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 296±308
Whither the Law and the Law Books? From Prescription to
Possibility
Roger Brownsword*
This article is a contribution to the occasional series dealing with
major books that have influenced the authors. Previous contributors
include Stewart Macaulay, John Griffith, William Twining, Carol
Harlow, Geoffrey Bindman, Harry Arthurs, Andre
Â-Jean Arnaud, Alan
Hunt, Michael Adler, Lawrence O. Gostin, and John P. Heinz
INTRODUCTION
In company with many academics of my generation, I have a sizeable
collection of books. Students who visit my office often ask, `Are these books
all yours?' To which, I respond that they are. Then, I am asked: `Have you
read them all?' To which, I respond that, excepting those that are written in
languages that I do not read, I have. But, then, I add that neither the collecting
nor the reading was any kind of hardship because I started young, I am getting
old, and I like reading books. Sadly, however, in preparation for the relocation
of the law school at King's College London (from its old quarters in the
Strand to the East Wing of Somerset House), the collection had to be culled.
Evidently, the vision for law school 2012 is one of offices that are not only
paperless but also less populated by books. Even with a relatively generous
bookshelf allocation of some 21 metres, it was never going to be easy to
decide which books to keep and which to let go. Imagine, then, surveying the
books that survived the cull and asking which one or two of these several
hundred candidates have most shaped my intellectual development.
How should anyone begin to answer a question like that? Should I be
identifying those books that I thought were quite wrong or missing the
point; or should I be looking to short-list those titles that led in what I
thought was the right direction?
1
Either way, it would be helpful to have a
296
ß2012 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2012 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, England
roger.brownsword@kcl.ac.uk
1 If this were the test, it is clear that Alan Gewirth's Reason and Morality (1978) would
be a prime contender.
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