The indefatigable Professor Kaye has assembled a team of contributors from the national jurisdictions within the Brussels and Lugano Conventions, and has obtained from each of them a survey of the manner in which Conventions have been interpreted and applied by their courts. The purpose of the collection is claimed to be to inform rather than to comment, to identify the case law from national courts, to clarify the reasoning which this reveals, and to keep critical or evaluative comment to a minimum. The material is arranged by country, and within that, in order of Convention article. Though this results in certain cases making more than one appearance, this is helpful. There is also a useful table of cases arranged by article; and the appearance of the volume is entirely pleasing.

It is not, and makes no claim to be, a critical commentary on the Convention. There are plenty of those about, and Professor Kaye is evidently about to produce another one. The national sections are variable in terms of length, depth and (one suspects) completeness. The English, Dutch and (especially) the German are full and helpful. Others feel rather thinner: the French chapter appears to be a very selective presentation, and the Spanish chapter is positively starved. Even so, if one should be grateful for what one is given, there is here a lot to be grateful for. It is an intelligent, international, reading list with marginal notes and comments, performing some of the functions latterly undertaken by Series D of the Digest of Case Law relating to the European Communities, and which now seems to have gone into perpetual hibernation. As such it has much to recommend it. It does also suggest that one needs the resources of a library to go back to in order to be read the whole of the case, for the summaries are sometimes extraordinary terse; if this is not possible, an indication for the uninitiated as to how this material might be electronically accessible might today be thought to be appropriate. Still, as a means of telling the practitioner where he may look and expect to find something useful (or unhelpful) to his case, this is a welcome addition to the shelves.