The publication of these two looseleaf binders by Oceana is the first step in the introduction of two new major reference works for practitioners, both intended primarily for the U.S. market but hoped to have some international appeal.

Commercial, Business and Trade Laws, when completed, will provide the practitioner with a translation into English of the commercial legislation of the major trading nations. To date Oceana has published Commercial Laws of the Middle East and is currently preparing binders on, inter alia, France, Federal Republic of Germany, Japan and South Africa, topics to include contracts, sale, agency, banking, company law and partnership, trade practices and investment. The review binder is the first volume of United Kingdom Trade Laws, consisting at the moment only of company law. The format of the binder, and, it may be assumed of the series in general, is an introductory section in which the history of U.K. company law is outlined, followed by the full text of the Companies Acts 1948 and 1980 (the supposedly included Act of 1967 was in fact missing, and the 1976 Act is due to form a part of the next issue).

The project as a whole is clearly an ambitious one, seeking as it does to provide the practitioner with all relevant legislation at his fingertips, but the actual usefulness of collections of this type is open to serious doubts. In the first place, U.K. company law cannot be ascertained by a reading of the Companies Acts, for most of the substantive rules are Judge-made; indeed, it is far from uncommon to find the Acts laying down exceptions to unstated general rules previously laid down by the courts. Admittedly, the reader is warned of this and is referred—albeit rather inadequately—to the standard English texts for further detail, but as an overseas practitioner is unlikely to know exactly when the Acts are telling only part of the story it is probably far safer for him