Vol. 12 No. 10 (October 2002)

 

THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN LAW, edited by Kermit L. Hall.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 944pp. Cloth $65. ISBN 0-19-508878-6.

 

Reviewed by Luke Bierman, American Bar Association. Email: BiermanL@staff.abanet.org

 

THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN LAW is described by its editors as “a comprehensive guide to the development and current status of American law” (viii).  It contains over 500 entries by 309 (my count) contributors, most of whom are scholars of criminal justice, history, law, political science, psychology, public policy, sociology, and other disciplines with a few practicing lawyers, judges and others thrown in for good measure, but professors of law have written by far the most entries.  Although most are less than a page long, the alphabetically arranged entries are of varying length and include some complex essays lasting many pages prepared by several authors as well as short descriptions that might be found in a standard law dictionary.  The writing styles are somewhat variable but the editors, led by Kermit L. Hall as Editor-in-Chief, have done a commendable job of standardizing entries so that the result is quite readable.

 

The entries found in THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN LAW can be categorized in many ways, and the editors offer a map for their organizational choices.  The editors acknowledge, “the institutions of the law include much more than the bench and bar.  They extend to police and prisons and to informal mechanisms of dispute resolution.  Moreover, law is much more than the black letters in the court reports and statutes; it is also the popular perspectives that the American people have held about the law and the sociopolitical context from which they approach it” (Id).  Accordingly, the editors stress governance as an organizing theme, firmly connecting the rule of law to the American experiment in democracy.  From this perspective, the entries can be (and are by the editors) identified as biographical summaries of important legal figures, substantive discourses about basic legal precepts, exploratory examinations of the manners by which the law affects life in America, descriptive assessments of important cases, and overviews of how law relates to a variety of institutions found on the American scene. 

 

This approach might be found deficient by some who adhere to prevailing research approaches found in political science generally and the public law subfield specifically.  Almost 10 years ago, writing on these pages with a review of the well known THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES (1992), Herbert Jacob reported that the volume offered insufficient references and paltry reliance on the political science literature, which limited its utility for serious research.  Indeed, he asked whether political scientists’ “contribution to our understanding of the Court [is] really as small as this volume suggests?” (1993, 42).  No doubt that same question regarding the law generally might be asked from a perusal of THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN LAW.  While findings based on a quantitative methodology are acknowledged, THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN LAW has many other viewpoints and perspectives to accommodate.  The focus on governance permits explicit and implicit incorporation of the interdisciplinary nature of the law, as seen in the varying expertise of the four named editors and the inclusion of entries discussing the impact on the law of many different social constructs and activities.  Indeed, an entry on “Political Science and Law” describes the contemporary state of affairs regarding the discipline’s impact on the law, an assessment that political scientists might not find terribly complimentary.  (618-619).

 

These entries are among the most interesting in the volume, providing helpful breadth and perspective from other American institutions, such as culture and literature, and other disciplines, such as Medicine, Economics and Anthropology.  The Law and Society movement is dealt with nicely, and different interpretative techniques find their way into a variety of entries.  These entries, like most in the volume, provide references for additional reading on the topic, which, when combined with information in the entries, can most often be helpful in finding other relevant material.  There does not seem to be consistency in the inclusion of these references, however, as some entries fail to have any references, such as the increasingly important topic of International Law, while others have several.  This criticism amounts to little more than a quibble though as the references on the whole seem appropriate for the volume and are usually helpful.  Certainly when taken with the information conveyed in the text of the entries, the references generally offer significant opportunities for more extensive and specialized research.

 

Of course, some might find it easy to make these types of quibbles with the choices of an editor when compiling a reference book held out as authoritative.  Certainly quibbles can be made with some of the entries presented in THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN LAW.  For example, the editors chose to include a biographical piece about only some of the Chief Justices of the United States, although these jurists would seem as essential to American law as Presidents are to American government.  Any reference volume on the latter topic would certainly be deemed incomplete without an entry for even Franklin Pierce or William Henry Harrison.  I also find it odd that there is an entry for the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure but not for the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or the Federal Rules of Evidence, although these latter procedural guideposts are mentioned in other entries.  Moreover, and inexplicably, the entry for civil procedure does not reference the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (642-647).  There is no entry for the Exclusionary Rule, a staple of American criminal and constitutional law that has generated much controversy in the last half of the 20th Century, although the well appointed topical index, itself running more than 50 pages (another 10 pages are devoted to a case index), points to several helpful discussions concerning this topic.  These choices, however, are mere quibbles as the entries generally are well conceived.   

 

Likewise, the content of the entries themselves are quite satisfactory, conveying much information and helpful perspectives that will assist a reader who is seeking a ready answer to a question or a quick assessment of an uncertain point.  Of course, it is possible to quibble here as well.  The entry for “court systems” explains that a state appellate court might be more specialized than the “federal circuit court of appeals,” without recognizing that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has a pretty specialized jurisdiction and apparently forgetting that these courts are known formally as courts of appeals, without the circuit moniker (184).  Likewise, the entry for “American Bar Association” refers to the entity that vets federal judicial nominees as the Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary although the committee’s formal name omits the “the”(22).  These exceptions are trivial oversights that do not seriously detract from the overall value of these entries specifically and the volume generally.

 

THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN LAW would be appropriately used by any of its intended audiences, which include students, scholars, and general readers, as a “widely available, authoritative reference on all aspects of American law” (ix).  It would be a good starting point for undergraduates seeking guidance about legal topics and more advanced students can learn something from the more extensive essays in particular.  As a component of the broadly recognized Oxford Companion titles, THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN LAW will undoubtedly be easily found and accessed, as it should be.  Its broad presentation in an approachable manner makes this OXFORD COMPANION helpful and relevant, destined for dog-eared pages from those who need a “widely available, authoritative reference on all aspects of American law” (ix).  For this reviewer, the reference volume fulfills its intentions, which are appropriate and timely.

 

One additional comment:  Professor Jacob’s observation almost a decade ago that a CD-ROM version of THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE SUPREME COURT Of THE UNITED STATES would be appropriate for those increasingly technologically competent students of the Court and would greatly enhance cross referencing within the volume was timely then, and is at least as applicable to THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN LAW in 2002.

 

THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE SUPREME COURT Of THE UNITED STATES. Kermit L. Hall (ed.).  New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

 

Review of THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE SUPREME COURT Of THE UNITED STATES. Herbert Jacob. Law and Politics Book Review, Vol. 3, No. 4, 41-42, 1993.

 

 

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Copyright 2002 by the author, Luke Bierman.