Constitutional Conventions in Westminster Systems: Controversies, Changes and Challenges. By Brian Galligan and Scott Brenton (eds.) [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. xii + 275 pp. Hardback £69.99. ISBN 978-1-10-710024-4.]

Abstract

unable to look after themselves. As such, the two areas of law must come into conflict and one will wax and the other will wane as the ideas on which they are based come into, or fall out of, fashion. Overall, both of these volumes are of the same high quality as their predecessors in the Obligations series, and they certainly do not amount to the private law equivalent of Tusk. But neither, I think, does either of these books come close to reaching the heights of something like the White Album. Two weaknesses hold them back. First, many of the papers in these books are so much of their time that there is no chance that they will be read even 10 or 15 years from now. Private law scholarship generally is too concerned at the moment with reportage and analysis of what is being reported on and too little concerned with viewing private law sub specie aeternitatis; the volumes under review suffer from that same lack of balance. Secondly, there is a striking lack of reference to anything other than primary and secondary legal sources in most of the papers in this collection. Private law scholarship that hermetically seals itself offaided by common law ideologies that dismiss the relevance of a vast range of human learning and experience, telling private scholars, "Move along, nothing to see here"cannot sustain itself for very long.