New Oxford Companion to Law

Here's an exciting update. The Oxford Companion to Law (1980) was done completely by David M. Walker, a Scottish lawyer. The New Oxford Companion to Law (2008) is edited by Peter Cane and Joanne Conaghan and written by a huge team. (To click through to amazon.de - scroll down on right) Both intended for non-lawyers, but they aren't intended to give advice on rights. Both are about 1300 pages long. The new book has quite a lot of illustrations, some in colour. Organization of the new book: about forty subject headings were chosen, each with a number of subcategories. These are listed at the back: Other methods of navigation: a lot of cross-references (words in bold) and some zero-word alphabetical entry headings, referring the reader elsewhere. There are also further cross-references at the ends of some of the entries. What has struck me so far: lots of great stuff, but a strange selection in some cases. See the picture above: I find a huge amount of legal theory, which to me seems out of place. There is an entry on 'the Other', and one on governmentality (Fouca…