Customer Reviews

Contracts (Black Letter Outlines)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you're a One-L looking for a study aid for your Contracts class, you won't find a better hornbook than this one. Calamari's classic text provides clear and intelligible discussion of the basic principles of contract law.

Also consider the student edition of E. Allan Farnsworth's treatise on Contracts; the original was three volumes long, but the student edition is condensed to one. Farnsworth's discussion is more in-depth, wide-ranging, and denser than Calamari's, so I used Calamari to get principles clear and then turned to Farnsworth for elaboration.

Get both if you can; otherwise get this one first. That's my recommendation, anyway.

THIS IS NOT THE PAPERBACK VERSION OF THE HORNBOOK. THIS IS A CANNED-OUTLINE WRITTEN BY THE AUTHORS OF THE HORNBOOK. DOES NOT REFERENCE CASES SPECIFICALLY OR OFFER A DETAILED ANALYSIS. MORE OF A "STUDY AID" ON PAR WITH EMMANUEL'S. FOR SOME REASON AMAZON CONFLATES THIS BOOK WITH THE HORNBOOK SERIES AND OFFERS IDENTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS FOR BOTH! DO NOT BUY THE PAPERBACK IF YOU WANT THE HORNBOOK!!

"Hornbooks" are summaries of a body of law used by angst-ridden law students to amplify and clarify the often arcane materials contained in Casebooks. The law of Contracts is one of the primary building blocks of a first year legal education, along with Property and Torts. Almost every 1L has a small library of these dark green encyclopedic volumes that weigh in by the kilogram.

CALAMARI AND PERILLO ON CONTRACTS is one of the few Hornbooks (along with PROSSER AND KEETON ON TORTS) that is considered an acceptable, though not authoritative, treatise for purposes of legal citation. Of course, cases themselves trump any other source material.

This is a very good, albeit very, very dense discussion of the Law of Contracts, which is one of the most intellectually challenging areas of the law. Most of the great legal theorists were Contracts specialists.

Most of our Common Law is a variation on Contract law---Torts is a violation of the Social Contract resulting in civil injury; Criminal law is a violation of the Social Contract resulting in wrongs punishable by incarceration or other sanctions; Property is all about implied (or express) contractual understandings as to the holding of title and interest; even Civil Procedure and Evidence are forms of Contract, a system of agreed-upon rules for conducting cases.

The sheer density of the material in CALAMARI AND PERILLO ON CONTRACTS makes this book less helpful than it might be to an overwhelmed law student. A typical 1L just doesn't have the time to parse and unpack this mahogany block of a text. There are other books out there that are more quickly and easily accessible, but none that acheives the depth of this particular volume. It is a "must have" for anyone serious in familiarizing themselves with the realm of Contracts.

So many years after the intellectual concentration camp that is First Year Law School, I find that perusing Hornbooks for interesting minutiae can be a rather enjoyable way spend a rainy, quiet afternoon. It's too bad that most law schools make grasping the underpinnings of the U.C.C. feel like root canal without novocaine. Law has a beauty that is often ruined by legal education.

If you plan to carry your Hornbooks around, get yourself a litigation case on wheels; it'll spare you a future of back problems.

Well, the fact that I'm writing a review about this book, while it's sitting open on my desk next to my computer, open and not being read, might be some evidence of how I'm enjoying this book. This book just goes on and on in complex an unclear language about a subject which shouldn't be so difficult. This book is not clear or easy to understand at all. Every sentence is awkward and followed by a footnote, and the masses of footnotes together take up half of EACH page (!), making this work look like a research project for a PhD publication. I have the casebook in this series, and sometimes it seems reading the cases alone will bring more clarity. And it turns to be true! This book might be good if you're advanced-contracts and want to know every little detail, or as an advanced reference later on, to look something up like in an encyclopedia. Some concepts, which should be pretty clear just get too in-depth coverage in this book. It's too complex for a first-year student. Sometimes it starts describing the different views out there, and then there's a jumble in your head as to what the law really is. I wish the author used his own knowledge and fluid language more than footnoted ideas from other authors.

This book is a must for lawyers and scholars from the continental law area because it provides a clear and general overview of the fundamental issues related with contract law.
For those that want to explore more in depth specific issues, then professor Farnsworth's Treatise on the subject would be the reference text. For legal students in the common law sistem it gives a very useful approach to the subject matter.

This book was a savior as I studied Contracts. It is well written, interesting, and very well organized.

And I own far too many, especially for someone who actually spends time writing Amazon reviews.

This book does a great job of explaining the policy and history-succinctly-behind most of the rules and theories we've covered in class and in the casebook.

I think this is my favorite hornbook, but I give it four stars for not giving as much insight into specific cases as other hornbooks do.

As the title indicates, this text is not very clear on concise. The authors introduce you too a great deal of information on contract law, which on the surface appears to be very helpful, until of course, you begin to read the text. Once you begin to read it, you will become confused as the shear amount of material thrown at you is difficult to understand and is written in incredibly long, run on sentences.

Recomend that you get an Emanual outline instead

THIS REVIEW DOES NOT APPLY TO THE WEST HORNBOOK. FOR SOME REASON AMAZON HAS COMBINED THE REVIEWS FOR THE HORNBOOK AND THE BLACK LETTER OUTLINE FOR CONTRACTS.

THIS REVIEW APPLIES TO THE BLACK LETTER OUTLINE FOR CONTRACTS BY WEST

I bought this book because I needed a better understanding of contracts during my 1L year. This book expanded upon the contracts outline I already had, put out by the same authors, C&P. This horn book was helpful for understanding a few areas more in depth, especially for another class where I needed to dig deeper than what was taught in contracts. On one hand, this book was readily available in the school library (probably yours too) and therefore was probably not a necessary purchase. On the other hand, it will be a more useful book for me in and out of practice, since lawyers and non-lawyers alike use contracts throughout life.

Some people are naturally good at Contracts. I am not one of them. Knowing my shortcoming, I wanted a hornbook to help explain the law to me when the textbook and lectures failed. The problem is that this is exactly like another textbook. It's written like a textbook and doesn't go through information in any further depth than my textbook did.

What really helped me were supplements (particularly Examples and Explanations). They explain the law in plain English and usually provide you with some questions and answers to help you begin to apply what you've just learned. This hornbook just regurgitates the same blurbs as your textbook with little or no added detail.