Kelly, Robert Q.

English

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DePaul Law Review Volume 6 Issue 2 Spring-Summer 1957 Article 17 Pollack: Fundamentals of Legal Research Robert Q. Kelly Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/law-review Recommended Citation Robert Q. Kelly, Pollack: Fundamentals of Legal Research, 6 DePaul L. Rev. 309 (1957) Available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/law-review/vol6/iss2/17 This Book Reviews is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Law at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in DePaul Law Review by an authorized editor of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact digitalservices@depaul.edu. BOOK REVIEWSFundamentals of Legal Research. By ERVIN H. POLLACK. Brooklyn: FoundationPress, 1956. Pp. xviii, 295. $5.00.You asked for it. You, as practicing attorneys, asked the law librarians for alawyer's research manual geared to the solutions of the actual problems whichcross the desk of the active practitioner. The librarians gave you volumes onlegal bibliography, so familiar to them, in their work of selecting, catalogingand classifying law books, but they gave you scant material on the practicalusage of law books. Pollack, both a librarian and a lawyer, emphasizes thatlegal research techniques should be taught to provide entry to the information-al content of the law but should also implement the lawyer's skills generallyand deepen his insights. Viewing law students as embryonic lawyers, Pollackhas prepared a book which can serve both as a teaching tool and a lawyer'sreference manual.This work is truly a manual, because it is literally handy. Necessarily com-pact for its size and the breadth of its content, it contains twenty chapters. Be-ginning with a panoramic vista of the total legal process, the scope is then nar-rowed to an appreciation of the basic elements of legal research; thereafter, thespecific use of eighteen forms of law books is explained. These forms are:constitutions, federal legislation, state and municipal legislation, court pro-cedure, court reports, federal court decisions, state court decisions and an-notated and special reports, methods of searching for case law, digests, aids inthe use of case and definition methods, encyclopedias, citators, administrativematerial, legal periodicals, treatises and restatements, miscellaneous researchaids, international law, and English legal research material. A booklet of as-signments involving the use of each of these forms is available as a supplementto this volume.The practicing attorney, who is interested enough in legal research to readthis review, will find the Appendices of Fundamentals of Legal Research veryhelpful. Appendix A consists of a practical guide to legal citations, abbrevia-tions, and signals. The value of a legal writing, whether it be simply an officememorandum or an appellate brief, depends significantly upon its form andclarity. The use of citations and abbreviations is absolutely necessary to achievethe concise form and lucidity, which is demanded by senior partners and jus-tices alike. Practicing lawyers often telephone librarians for interpretation ofesoteric abbreviations of Anglo-American legal publications. Appendix B, acomprehensive and up-to-date table of abbreviations of Anglo-American legalpublications, will help to reduce your phone bill.The author describes and analyzes the research procedure involved in thesolution of a typical legal case. It is to be regretted that he did not offer atleast one example case and analysis for each of the more important forms oflegal research. Nothing serves so well to concretize the principles of legal re-search as actual examples of the principles in action. Despite this deficiency,Ervin H. Pollack, Professor of Law and Law Librarian of Ohio State Univer-sity, has made a significant contribution toward the integration of theory and309J IU DE PAUL LAW REVIEWpractice in legal research. His functional approach to the fundamentals meritsthe attention of the practicing attorney and the law student alike.ROBERT Q. KELLY*Librarian, De Paul University College of Law.Judges and Jurors: Their Functions, Qualifications, and Selection. By ARTHURT. VANDERBILT, Chief Justice, Supreme Court of New Jersey. Boston: BostonUniversity Press, 1956. Pp. 79. $3.00.The pressure for judicial improvement, both in personnel and methods ofoperation, has become stronger and stronger since the beginning of the cen-tury. Throughout the country prominent judges and lawyers have been de-voting their talents to devise means for reaching that objective. Their effortshave been fruitful to a considerable extent in the field of practice and proced-ure. In many of the state jurisdictions, as well as in the federal courts, common-law methods of pleading and practice have been replaced by modem codeseither by legislative enactments or through the rule-making power of courts oflast resort.Of the host of contemporary advocates for procedural and judicial reform,one man stands out pre-eminently as the leader in the field. It is his good for-tune to be able to add to his advocacy-through speeches, lectures and writings-power and authority to demonstrate the wisdom of his theories and theirworkability. Judge Arthur T. Vanderbilt has enriched the literature on thesubject of judicial reform and has attracted the attention of judges and lawyersthroughout the country to the character of his work. As Chief Justice he hasled the bench and bar of New Jersey in the accomplishment of reorganizingthe judicial system of his state.His latest contribution consists of three Gaspar G. Bacon lectures deliveredby him and now published, in book form, by the Boston University Pressunder the title of: Judges and Jurors: Their Functions, Qualifications andSelection. It is a work of extraordinary merit and should attract a readingpublic of not only judges and lawyers but of laymen as well. I suspect thatthe author intended it primarily for the enlightenment of laymen.The book is exceptional in this respect. Dealing as it does with the complexproblems of the judicial office, the judicial function, qualifications and selectionof judges and the functions, qualifications and selection of jurors, it crowds intoseventy-nine pages a wealth of information which should enable any lay personof average intelligence to discuss major judicial problems understandingly andwell. The book has still another great value. It points out the way toward anew literary goal, namely, the writing of textbooks on law-its history, itsphilosophy and its impact upon our civilization-for use in our primary andsecondary schools and colleges.Under our Constitution and in the spirit of the institutions which developedunder it, the Bible and other sacred literature may not be studied or even readin the public schools. In the patterns of human behavior woven into the sub-stance of the Bible, there is to be found a vast display of universal civil andcriminal laws. This is kept from the children and adolescents (who do notattend religious schools) at a time when coming into contact with them wouldvitally help shape their behavior. It is altogether right that no place should be

Pollack:  Fundamentals of Legal Research

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