Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
BOOK NOTICE - CASES AND MATERIALS ON ADMIRALTY
CASES AND MATERIALS ON ADMIRALTY (2nd Edition) by Nicholas J. Healy, Adjunct Professor of Law, New York University, and David Sharpe, Professor of Law, George Washington University. West Publishing Co., St. Paul, Minnesota (1986, xliii and 818 pp., plus 43 pp. Appendices and 14 pp. Index). Hardback. The expansive meaning of the word “admiralty” in the U.S. coupled with the format of this weighty and attractively produced volume combine to make it a useful vade mecum to the voluminous maritime law of one of the world’s most important (associations of) jurisdictions to shipping. The authors (despite the title of the book, they are not simply editors) begin, of necessity, with an historical introduction, then continue with jurisdiction, a more complex issue than in many other jurisdictions because of the federal-state interplay. Practice and procedure, liens and mortgages follow and, in subsequent chapters, there is detailed treatment of collisions, towage and pilotage, salvage and limitation of liability, plus personal injury and wrongful death, a peculiarly active area in American maritime law. In addition, the book deals with charterparties, ocean bills of lading, general average and marine insurance, thus providing a more rounded, albeit for individual topics more selective, coverage than would be expected in most books on shipping law.
The range of materials appearing is varied. In the main, this is a casebook but there are also extracts from statutes and official rules, as well as specimen pleadings and forms etc. It is often not easy at a glance to see where one item ends and another begins or to distinguish between the different types of material incorporated and the frequent, helpful comments by the authors, who could have been better served by the publishers in this respect. The book is nonetheless well worth consultation for, although (or perhaps even because) it does not attempt rigorous and detailed analysis, the authors are successful in fulfilling their manifest intention to provide a basic introduction, in readily intelligible (if sometimes perhaps rather general) language, to an important body of law