The 'Law Explosion':
KONVITZ, MILTON R.
The 'Law Explosion' The World of Law. Edited by Ephraim London. Simon and Schuster. 2 vols; 654 and 780 pp. $17.50. Reviewed by Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Law and of Industrial and Labor...
...Simon and Schuster has published the first two volumes and hopefully the success of these volumes will encourage them to publish the other three: one volume of writings by judges, a second devoted to legal history and anthropology and a third made up of biographical material...
...Into this dense forest Ephraim London has bravely attempted to penetrate, and he has come out with enough specimens to fill five large volumes...
...Such persons may be reassured that London's selections are no more typical of legal literature than Richard Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is typical of theological writings or Plato's Dialogues of philosophical writings...
...and general and special books on or about law—like Holmes' Common Law or the Holmes-Laski Letters...
...The second volume lists accounts of some notable and notorious cases, including H. L. Mencken's report of the Scopes trial, Justice Frankfurter's analysis of the Sacco-Vanzerti case, Zola's "J'accuse...
...In the 1945 volume he noted that the decisions of the American courts for that one year covered 79,605 pages in 70 books of the National Reporter System, and pointed out that the Code of Federal Regulations, then in preparation, would contain approximately 11,000,000 words (compared with 774,746 in the Bible and about 900,000 in Shakespeare's plays...
...There is the danger, however, that laymen may be led to think these writings are typical of the "world of law" and that they have wasted their lives by not becoming lawyers...
...and Morris R. Cohen on the Bertrand Russell-CCNY case...
...There are also about 150 pages of testimony and legal argument, including Gandhi's plea for the severest penalty upon his conviction for sedition, Justice Jackson's closing address at the Nuremberg trial and Plato's Apology...
...These would fit more nearly the "world of law" than do the selections found in the two published volumes, which contain a great deal of exciting writing about the law but done mainly by persons outside the bench or bar...
...countless legal digests, like Corpus Juris...
...In the 1946 volume Vanderbilt noted that Congress and 14 state legislatures had passed 10,024 pages of laws that year, and in the preceding year Congress and the legislatures of 43 states in regular session and of five states in special session enacted 39,620 pages of statutes—a total, for the biennium of 1945-46, of 49,644 pages of legal action...
...Then there are some 300 pages of judgments and observations on the law, including Albert Camus' reflections on the guillotine, the dissenting opinion of Holmes in U. S. v. Schwimmer, the concurring opinion of Brandeis in Whitney vs...
...The late Arthur T. Vanderbilt nibbled at the problem in his introductions to several volumes of the Annual Survey of American Law...
...and much similar material, all eminently meeting London's test of "great literature" — writing that ignites or inspires...
...In some ways just as serious as the population explosion is the law publishing explosion—a phenomenon that has immeasurable effects on "the rule of law," the principle of stare decisis, law school teaching and legal practice...
...Besides the court decisions and the legislative and administrative enactments, there are approximately 150 law reviews, all busy grinding out articles, case comments and legal notes...
...The first volume contains Dickens' account of the trial of Bardell v. Pickwick, Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy, Herman Wouk's trial by court martial from The Caine Mutiny and many briefer selections from Faulkner, Balzac, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Chekhov, Rabelais and other classic and near-classic writers...
...California, the opinions of Learned Hand and Jerome Frank in Repowille v. U.S...
...Reviewed by Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Law and of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University No one to my knowledge has undertaken to measure the frightening extent of the "world of law...
...legal treatises, like Williston on Contracts and Wigmore on Evidence...
...Obviously, only a lawyer who was able to handle successfully cases on The Miracle and Lady Chatterley's Lover in the Supreme Court could put together these notable, beautiful, readable, important selections...
...One day a national commission will be called upon to consider this problem, which becomes more aggravated each year...
Vol. 44 • February 1961 • No. 9
