You ask, seemingly with some doubt, how I know that
county law libraries do not exist outside North
America. Of course I canot know every country in the
world, although in 20 years in the diplomatic service
I encountered a few, and in putting together my book
on European nationality laws and sources of law (the
material collected, but NOT used in the book
(including translations of the vernacular versions
that WERE used) are at
http://www.bigfoot.com/~nationality.
I actually visited Parliamentary, national and
university law faculty libraries in EVERY non-EEA
European country EXCEPT Estonia, Russia and Bosnia,
plus Liechtenstein (which is EEA) (because primary
materials on those countries laws could be found in
other cities I was in: London, Lausanne, Brussels and
Los Angeles).
Here in the UK, public libraries are likely to have
Halsbury's Laws of England (a commentary, but NOT
Halsbury's Statutes, the primary laws). If one wants
to look at case law, one has to visit a court library
or a law school library. You could argue that the
court libraries are "county law libraries" but they
are not that in the sense you would expect to find in
the US.
In France, one can buy the annotated civil code, the
criminal code and all the other codes quite cheaply
(under $20) in large bookstores -- and it was
Napoleon's concept that the civil code should be in
every home, easily understandable. Civil law
jurisdictions do not apply case law as common-law
jurisdictions do, and "digests" don't exist quite the
way they do in Anglo-American law countries.
"Doctrine" -- commentaries by academic experts, are
the secondary source of law.
It would take quite a long essay to explain just why
litigious America is different from the rest of the
world -- not necessarily better or worse, just
different -- and why access to the law is more
important in the US. It also tends to be cheaper:
there are more lawyers. Not necessarily better ones on
average, but more of them. Most Europeans would say
that US law has become unnecessarily complex. I would
add that it has become unnecessarily politicized.
(Sunday's CBS "60 Minutes" on indefinite detention of
certain convicts not susceptible of deportation is an
example: it's clearly a violation of the Refugee
Convention and Protocol (as to authenticated refugees
anyway); but then Congress can ignore and implicitly
abrogate a treaty if it wants to.
Andy Grossman
University College London, SLAIS
44
--- "Norman, Patrick J." <PNORMAN@ReillyGoodwin.com>
wrote:
> You stated in your law-lib post "(Of course nowhere
> else in the world but
> North America
> is there such a thing as county law libraries.
> Certainly not here in
> Britain.)" It is unclear how you know this. As for
> Britain I am wondering
> what the situation is. The law must be made public
> if it is to be known and
> understood. This is requisite even under British
> constitutional standards.
> Certainly there are public libraries available that
> house necessary domestic
> legal sources. Clarification on the topic would be
> of general interest.
> Please respond.
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