This is an unusual book. According to the Preface it originated as a collection of materials for courses on common law given by the author to French students in Paris. Perhaps not surprisingly, it therefore adopts a comparative and philosophical approach. Approximately the first quarter of the book is devoted to the structure of the common law and to methods of legal reasoning. After a section on remedies, the last half of the book is devoted to obligations, the greater part of which deals with the law of contract.

The book benefits from the perspectives which the author’s knowledge of modern continental systems, and of Roman law, enables him to bring to discussion of the common law. Much of the book does, however, seem highly idiosyncratic. Dr Samuel writes in his Preface that: “Some of the comments are somewhat provocative.” Unfortunately they more often seem to be so general and tendentious, and only obliquely related to the source material which precedes them, as to be simply bizarre. For example, on p. 56 a brief passage from Steyn, L.J., in the Court of Appeal in White v. Jones [1995] 2 A.C. 207, emphasizing the value of academic writing, and a quotation from H. F. Jolowicz’s Lectures on Jurisprudence (1963), which includes a passing reference to “general principles”, is followed by questions which include: “Is law based on general principles?” The next one is: “Are there different kinds of law textbooks—for example are there ‘academic’ and ‘practitioner’ textbooks? If you had written what you considered to be an ‘academic’ work, would you regard it as an insult if a colleague called it a ‘practitioner’ work?” These questions are at least comprehensible but, to this reviewer at least, that is not always the case. On p. 190 we are in familiar territory dealing with damages for personal injury when suddenly, without warning, following a passage from Lord Diplock’s judgment in Wright v. British Railways Board [1983] 2 A.C. 773, Dr Samuel hits us with the following question: “What is the scientific object of the legal science of personal injury damages: the injuries or the Court of Appeal? If the latter, does this not mean that law is the object of its own science? Could the object be the amounts attributed by the Court of Appeal to various types of injury? If so, does mathematics then become the object?” Unless the author is the victim of some ghastly typographical error, and the addition of a word (or two) would make his meaning crystal clear, this passage seems to rival early Wittgenstein in its enigmatic obscurity.