Customer Reviews

Black's Law Dictionary

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Every first year law student spends the evening before his or her first day of law school examining this weighty tome, leafing through its dense double-columned pages of arcane and obsolete legalese, rolling the syllables of Latin phrases like "consentientes et agentes pari poena plectentur" or "in dubio, pro legi fori" around on the back of the tongue, experimenting with various pronunciations of harsh old Anglo-Saxon terms like "lyef-geld" or "gisle" or "feoffee", and pondering the shaded meanings of such linguistic curiousities as "nudum pactum", "girth and sanctuary" or "estate tail". All of this and more is taken in by the eager law student, who reads on into the night before parking the tome on the shelf and dropping off to sleep. Nine times out of ten, the book thereafter remains unopened, gathering dust, dutifully moving from apartment to apartment, then from office to office in the course of one's legal career (should the law student be so fortunate as to have one). Very occasionally, the student or lawyer may encounter an unfamiliar word or phrase, and Black's Law Dictionary will come down off the shelf for a brief interlude. Those few lawyers who have the time or inclination will marvel at the wealth of legal arcanography contained between the boards of a single volume. One or two might even take it home for bedtime reading. For most, however, it is merely a part of the furniture, little used, underappreciated and generally ignored. Even so, I heartily recommend it, not only as an indispensible part of every lawyer's library furniture, but also as a veritable treasure trove of tidbits such as "lex fingit ubi subsistit aequitas", "tenants by the verge" and "smoke farthings". For sheer power to amaze and entertain, how could this not be one of the ten great books of the English language?