We begin our fall lineup of reviews with Richard Uviller’s examination of two books on hate crime, followed by a reply by Frederick Lawrence.  Next, Margaret Berger focuses on scientific evidence and the law. Charles Calleros looks at a book on appellate brief writing, whereas Francis Mootz explores the nature of language in the law. Stephen Feldman comments on a new work concerning individualism and multiculturalism.  Finally, Milner Ball engages us on the tort of criminal conversation.  As always, your views count – so talk back to us.

It’s massive.  Two volumes, 1,400 pages, and case citations and comments galore -- all based on three decades of doing defamation law.  It’s Sack on Defamation: Libel, Slander, and Related Problems (Practicing Law Institute, 3rd edition, 1999).  The author is Judge Robert D. Sack of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Prior to his recent confirmation, Robert Sack represented newspaper corporations in the Supreme Court and wrote an amicus brief in Food Lion v. ABC.  He also litigated questions concerning the Internet.  As a practitioner he expressed serious reservations about the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act, this well before the Supreme Court passed on the matter.  Finally, Judge Sack is the co-author of a treatise on commercial speech.

The new edition of Judge Sack’s defamation treatise has 17 chapters (notably expanded beyond the second edition) that cover literally everything, including constitutional principles, torts principles, privacy, privileges, immunities, and damages.  Current hot topics, such as state food disparagement laws, are also discussed and analyzed.  There are, of course, real-world chapters on discovery, motions practice, and insurance -- all essential coverage topics for practitioners.

Sack on Defamation belongs in law school libraries, and not just because it is a helpful tool for would-be lawyers.  The two volumes should be housed in the academy if only to alert law professors and casebook authors that this topic is very rich and that the current state of academic treatment of defamation is plainly inadequate.  For only one example, the book has what few constitutional or torts casebooks have: a discussion (quite detailed, actually) of the "of and concerning" requirement of New York Times v. Sullivan.  This real-world topic gets little, if any, discussion in the classroom.  Why?

Sack on Defamation is too valuable a work to be limited to lawyers; there needs to be an abridged one volume edition for law students (and their profs., too!).

What do we know about law in today’s China?  For that matter, what do we know about law in yesterday’s China?  Whatever we know (and it is relatively little), that is likely to change when Stanford University Consulting Law Professor and Chinese scholar Stanley B. Lubman publishes his 500-page Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China after Mao (Stanford University Press, 1999).  The work is scheduled to reach bookstores this December.

Professor Lubman's tome examines the cultural and institutional context in which legal reforms have and are taking place in China.  He traces the main features of pre-Communist Chinese legal tradition, the drastic impact that thirty years of Maoist rule had on the law, and the extensive changes throughout Chinese society since Mao’s death, notably the rise of the local party-state at the expense of central government power.

Lubman’s analysis begins with the Chinese leadership’s policy toward law, identifying the basic ambivalence that makes the Chinese commitment to legality incomplete.  It then surveys major developments -- emphasizing the creation of new rights, the revision of criminal law and procedure, and the construction of a nascent administrative law.

Since 1979, China has been building new legal institutions, made necessary by economic reforms that have reduced the role of state planning and by the decline of Maoist totalitarianism.  Bird in a Cage analyzes the principal legal institutions that have emerged, and assesses the prospects for increasing the rule of law in China.  Lubman also examines in some detail the processes of dispute resolution by extrajudicial mediation and the courts.  His study of the courts examines court organization, the selection and training of judges, the rise of litigation, the critical influence of localism, and ongoing conflicts between professionalism and a continuing tendency to view the judge as an advocate for the state.  The book concludes by appraising implications for U.S. policy on such issues as human rights, Chinese involvement with the World Trade Organization, and bilateral relations generally.   (For a work of related interest, see Professor Janet Ainsworth's fine review of Melissa Macauley’s Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China (Stanford University Press, 1998).)

We confess: we do have an ever-so-slight penchant for reviewing books on jurisprudence.   Even so, we’re having trouble just keeping up with all the new jurisprude books.  Holy Holmes! or Habermas!, or Horwitz!, or Dworkin or Derrida!, or Plato or Patterson!, or Wittgenstein or West!   There’s something for about every jurisprude.  Here is a small sampling of just-published or forthcoming books on the subject.

Interested in Pragmatism, or Premodernism, or Postmodernism, or Positivism, or Lego/Politico-Philosophy?  If so, do we have some books for you -- five for starters.   This August marked the arrival of The Autonomy of Law: Essays on Legal Positivism (Oxford, 1999), edited by Robert P. George.   This October, we will see the publication of In Defense of Legal Positivism (Oxford, 1999) by Matthew Kramer.   Then, there's Brian Tamanah's Realistic Socio-Legal Theory: Pragmaticism and a Social Theory of Law (Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 1999).  Next, Heidi M. Hurd's Moral Combat (Cambridge University Press, 1999).  Finally, there is Stephen M. Feldman's American Legal Thought from Premodernism to Postmodernism (Oxford, January 2000).

Forthcoming

The October 1999 issue of Books-on-Law is scheduled to feature the following:

• Randy Barnett, reviewing Clay Conrad's Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a Doctrine
• Donna Lenhoff, reviewing Mona Harrington's Care and Equality
• Christopher May, reviewing Jeffrey A. Smith's, War and Press Freedom
• Anthony Sebok, reviewing Richard Posner's The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory
• Robert Weisberg, reviewing H. Richard Uviller's The Titled Playing Field: Is Criminal Justice Unfair?
• and a special appearance in Past Perfect.

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
Technical Assistant for Books-on-Law: Steven Pacillio

© Ronald K.L. Collins and David Skover, 1999.