JURIST: Books-on-Law is edited by Ronald K.L. Collins and David Skover of the Seattle University School of Law

Editorial Consultants:

Pierce O'Donnell, a noted practitioner specializing in libel law and intellectual property, begins things with a witty and imaginative essay, entitled "Elvis Lives! . . . At Least in Court."

Moving to the reviews, Nadine Strosssen (a member of our Board of Editorial Consultants) offers some thoughts on the law of habeas corpus as she reviews Marianne Wesson's Render Up the Body. Next, Marianne Wesson tackles the topic of law and literature in her review of Trial and Error: An Oxford Anthology of Legal Stories, edited by Fred Shapiro and Jane Garry. Mary-Christine Sungaila shares her lawyerly insights as she reviews The Perfect Witness by Barry Siegel.  Finally, Jerome McCristal Culp, Jr. brings it all home in his review of the second edition of Judge Richard Posner's Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation.  If you want to see what other new and related books are out there, visit our Law & Literature and Legal Fiction links in Book Notices.

Also in this issue: Timothy Shiell (a professor of philosophy) looks at Richard Abel's new book on free speech jurisprudence, while T. Geremy Gunn examines Rett R. Ludwikowski's book on constitution-making in the former Soviet Union.

The narrative of that infamous trial -- the one about Josef K. who was charged by a mysterious legal authority for an unknown crime of which he knew nothing -- is back in a newly translated form. The Trial (1925) by Franz Kafka (1883-1924) has just been re-translated by B. Breon Mitchell, a professor of comparative literature and German studies at Indiana University.

Before Kafka died, he gave instructions to his friend Max Brod to burn his writings.   Brod, however, saved the papers and assembled them for publication based on his own editorial judgments.  The new rendition of The Trial (Schocken Books, 1998) (cloth: $24.00) relies on a restored text derived from what Brod never destroyed.  The new Schocken Books edition -- unlike a 1925 German edition and a 1937 translation -- resembles the original work-product of the author.  The poetics, prose, and the sequence of the chapters, among other things, have been redone to reflect the original design of Kafka, the great literary figure with a law degree.  The task was undertaken by an international team of Kafka experts who could not, for a variety of nagging legal reasons, gain access to the original manuscripts until the late 1980s when the papers were auctioned off to the German national literary archives, where they are now kept.  This new edition is also accompanied by some Kafka fragments and a useful chronology of his life, followed by a bibliography.

For some legal commentary on Kafka and his Trial, see Robin West, Narrative, Authority, and Law (University of Michigan Press, 1993) and Richard Posner, Law and Literature: A Misunderstood Relation (Harvard University Press, 2^nd edition 1997) (reviewed in this issue).

"The book has a libertarian flavor, but is somewhat more moderate."  So says Professor E. Allan Farnsworth (Columbia University, Law) in speaking of his just-released book, Changing Your Mind: The Law of Regretted Decisions (Yale University Press, 1998) (cloth: $30.00).  Changing Your Mind is the first such work of this kind for the noted contracts scholar, known widely for his casebooks and legal treatises.   "I was interested in how some of the general principles in contract law affected other areas of law.  What I found was that they were the same principles, ones not limited to contracts," he told us.

Drawing on cases and nonlegal authorities -- ranging from Rousseau and Martin Luther to Shirley MacLaine and Willie Nelson -- Professor Farnsworth discusses and analyzes the notion of the irrevocability of a commitment.  This he does in the context of contracts, torts, property, trusts, wills, agency, and family law.  Throughout, he moves back and forth from scholarly concerns to practical ones.  "I wanted," he emphasized, "to write something that combined theoretical speculation with what actually happens in courtrooms."

Changing Your Mind may not play exceedingly well to the "detrimental reliance" crowd.  The book, said Farnsworth, is critical of "the ascendancy of the reliance principle to the neglect of the intention principle."  When asked how sympathetic his new work is to legal paternalism, he replied: "It is not."

Changing Your Mind is slated to be reviewed in a future issue of Books-on-Law.

Daphne Patai describes her new book as "a book about the feminist turn against men."  Its title: Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) (cloth: $22.95).  Professor Patai (who teaches women's studies and comparative literature at University of Massachusetts-Amherst) does not mince words when it comes to "feminist ideologues" of the likes of Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, and Mary Daly.  They have, says the author, induced hostility toward men and heterosexuality in the most repressive of ways.   Patai, a "still-avowed feminist," attacks the "sexual harassment industry" by offering up the cases of men and women who have had to contend with false or frivolous charges.  The focus of this controversial look at sexual harassment is the academy, though much of what is said could apply to the workplace, too . . . but not without some sharp measure of dissent.

Professor Patai's other works include Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies (Basic Books, 1994), Brazilian Women Speak: Contemporary Life Stories (Rutgers University Press, 1988), and The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male Ideology (University of Massachusetts Press, 1984).

On a related note: Professor Alan M. Dershowitz addresses the topic of sexual harassment -- and much more -- in his latest book, Sexual McCarthyism: Clinton, Starr, and the Emerging Constitutional Crisis (Basic Books, 1998) (cloth: $23.00).

Coming Soon:

With the January 1999 issue, Books-on-Law begins its second volume.  This provides an apt occasion for us to revisit the theme of the very first issue of Books-on-Law this year, "Jurists on JURIST."  Among the book reviews to be published next month, several have been written by foreign and American judges:

• Ian Callinan (High Court of Australia), reviewing Bob Jarvis & Paul Joseph, Prime Time Law: Fictional Television as Legal Narrative
• Morris S. Arnold (8^th Circuit), reviewing Martin Garbus & Stanley Cohen, Tough Talk: How I Fought for Writers, Comics, Bigots, and the American Way
• Avern Cohn (Eastern District, MI), reviewing Mirjan R. Damaska, Evidence Law Adrift
• Norma L. Shapiro (Eastern District, PA), reviewing Nancy Levit, The Gender Line: Men, Women, and the Law
• J. Clifford Wallace (9^th Circuit), reviewing Robert A. Katzmann, Courts and Congress

In addition, we will revisit the provocative debate over Edward Lazarus's Closed Chambers (Times Books, 1998), featured in our May, 1998 special issue. Professor Erwin Chemerinsky (USC, Law) will critique a uninhibited review of the Lazarus book written by Judge Alex Kozinski (9^th Circuit).

Ronald K.L. Collins & David M. Skover, Editors, Books-on-Law

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JURIST: Books-on-Law™ is edited by Ronald K.L. Collins and David M. Skover of the Seattle University School of Law.

Board of Editorial Consultants: Raj Bhala, George Washington University Law School; Miriam Galston, George Washington University Law School; Kermit Hall, Ohio State University College of Law; Yale Kamisar, University of Michigan Law School; Lisa G. Lerman, Catholic University of America School of Law; David M. O'Brien, University of Virginia Department of Government and Foreign Affairs; Judith Resnik, Yale Law School; Edwin L. Rubin, University of Pennsylvania Law School; Steven H. Shriffrin, Cornell Law School; Nadine Strossen, New York Law School; David B. Wilkins, Harvard Law School.

Administrative Assistant for Books-on-Law: Ms. Nancy Ammons

© Ronald K.L. Collins and David Skover, 1998. —————————————————————————————
JURIST: The Law Professors' Network™ is directed by Professor Bernard J. Hibbitts, Associate Dean for Communications & Information Technology, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, in consultation with an international Advisory Board. E-mail JURIST at JURIST@law.pitt.edu.

© Bernard J. Hibbitts, 1998. All rights reserved. These pages may not be copied, reposted, or republished, in whole or in part, electronically or in print, without express written permission.

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