by Professor Reinhard Zimmermann, Emeritus (Director) of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg
“Mr. Booker, however, would review such a book as Lady Carbury’s ‘Criminal Queens’ without bestowing much trouble on the reading. He could do it almost without cutting the book, so that its value for purposes of after sale might not be injured”: Anthony Trollope, ‘The Way We Live Now’, Chapter 1.
(i) Modern academic life is characterized by an apparently unstoppable trend towards specialization. At the same time, we are faced with a proliferation of legal literature. It becomes more and more difficult to follow developments in areas not directly relevant to one’s own field of research. (ii) Contrary to the natural sciences and economics, law is a field of research where the writing of books constitutes a long-established and essential means of producing knowledge. In a number of countries (Germany and Italy among them) a scholar has to write two books in order to qualify for an academic career. In other countries (England and Scotland, for example) an aspiring academic usually has to write a PhD thesis which, in a revised version, is often subsequently published as a book. (iii) With so much writing going on, nobody can read all new law books, even those in a limited field such as contract law, or constitutional law.
Against this background, book reviews are supposed to help by highlighting salient points and arguments, and by providing a reasoned assessment of new books. But the review system does not function properly. In many countries (Germany provides an example) it appears to be quite arbitrary whether or not a book is reviewed. Only a minority of books is reviewed at all. The reasons are not difficult to find. Writing a review does not count for much when it comes to evaluating an academic’s research output. And yet, writing a fair and competent book review is an exacting task. It requires a careful reading of the book and a critical reflection of its content. A reviewer has to avoid flattery as much as ruthless condemnation. Even measured criticism can make the reviewer unpopular within certain segments of the academic community. Thus, it can be difficult for journal editors to find a suitable reviewer, all the more so as there may not be many colleagues who possess the necessary expertise concerning a specific topic and, at the same time, the necessary impartiality and openness for new ideas (which usually diverge from their own).
These are some of the reasons why a circle of German colleagues gets together every year to look at the list of books published in the past year in order to identify those which are worth being read by every lawyer whose intellectual curiosity extends beyond what constitutes the staple diet of his or her professional life. Our circle consists of academics from as many different areas of law as possible (private law, commercial law, public law, public international law, criminal law) and with a broad variety of outlooks, approaches, and interests (historical, comparative, theoretical, economic, to mention the most prominent examples). By the end of April every member of the group proposes one, two, or three books he or she has come across which would merit a discussion by the group. We then read those books (usually about fifteen) and get together for a day in July in order to discuss them. That discussion is introduced by the proposer who explains why he or she finds the relevant book noteworthy and deserving of our attention and consideration. An animated discussion follows, revolving around many different aspects of the book, the topic discussed in it, and the style in which it has been written. The general suitability for our purposes is then assessed. We normally have a second round in order to compare the books discussed and to draw up a list of between five and seven of them which we consider to be the relatively most suitable ones. We then publish an article in one of the main German law reviews recommending those books to our readership. The individual reviews usually reflect our discussion; they are drafted by the person who has made the original proposal; one of us then edits these reviews, ties them together, and adds an introduction with some more general reflections. The article usually appears at the beginning of October, in time for the great Frankfurt Book Fair.
We are, of course, aware of the fact that even a group of ten academics from diverse legal backgrounds cannot keep track of all legal publications within a given year. Also, relatedly, we specifically do not claim to provide a list of “the best” laws books within that year. Our claim is more modest: we want to draw attention to books which deserve a wide readership because they tackle a topic of general interest, display originality of thought, and are well-written. Only exceptionally, therefore, does our list contain monographs on very specialized topics (unless they are of an exemplary character relevant more broadly). Often, of course, our list contains books dealing with historical, comparative, philosophical, or political foundations of the law. In the past year (Juristenzeitung 2024, 876–883) we have recommended books on the foundations of public international law in the work of G.W.F. Hegel, the limits of “personalizing” the law, the limitations of the Federal Constitutional Court’s competencies in historical perspective (“power and method”), and the non-codified rules, or conventions, governing the way in which the German Parliament is run; we had on our list a constitutional history of the European Union, and the late Axel Flessner’s textbook on European Contract Law (dealing with the remedies for non-performance); and we had the autobiography of a German public lawyer of Jewish extraction who had to leave Germany in December 1933 and became a prominent political scientist in the United States – he created the concept of “wehrhafte Demokratie” (militant democracy) which appears to be of considerable relevance today in a number of countries worldwide. Our list only contains monographs, not collections of essays, Festschriften, or commentaries. It is confined to “German” books, i.e. books either written by German (or Swiss or Austrian) authors, whether published in German or English, or by foreign authors but published in German, or by a German publishing house. Of course, our own books or books by our academic pupils are excluded. All these “German” books have been discussed by our group and are supported by all of its members (even if, in the first round of discussion they may have had a different preference). The article concludes with a list of (usually) two or three “foreign” books which one or the other of us has happened to come across; last year these were Alina Muniu-Pippidi, Rethinking Corruption; Matthew Dyson, Explaining Tort and Crime; and Peter Sarris, Justinian: Emperor, Soldier, Saint.
All of us, I think, have found the self-imposed discipline to read (good and interesting) law books from a variety of fields a most salutary experience, significantly broadening our horizon. The discussions in our group are always great fun; and they teach us much about different ways of arguing and assessing the quality of legal publications. Also, it is a welcome opportunity to meet colleagues not in a meeting of an essentially administrative nature but to engage in academic discussion. I can whole-heartedly recommend the establishment of similar groups of colleagues in other countries. (A less ambitious precursor of the reading group just presented was a group of seven colleagues from the law faculty of the University of Regensburg; we used to get together twice per semester to discuss a new legal book one of us had proposed and all of us had read – likewise a memorable experience.)
