The status of textbooks and journals

The textbooks you will read are likely to have been written specifically for students; and the material they cover, and the limited detail into which they go, will reflect this. If you go on to practise law, you will encounter rather grander tomes designed especially for practitioners.

This modern view of the non-authoritative status of learned authors may be contrasted with the attitude taken in some cases by judges in earlier centuries, when statements made by authors such as Glanvill in the 12th century through to Blackstone in the 18th century were often treated as being binding statements of law. Of course, the modern approach does not disqualify the courts from seeking assistance from the best available scholarship: it merely preserves the constitutional position (which is explained in Chapter 2) as to what does, and does not, count as a source of law.

Applying this principle to your activities as a student, it follows that you may treat the views of authors as being persuasive when you are presenting a piece of coursework or an examination answer. However, you should be careful to use those views as supplements to your legal arguments, rather than as substitutes for the careful citation of judicial decisions and statutes. Similarly, when citing from casebooks, you must cite the report of the case itself, rather than the extract from the casebook, because it is the views of the judges, and not the views of the casebook editor, which carry weight. (You will remember that the nature of casebooks is that they contain extracts from judgments. The original reports, on the other hand, may also contain passages casting doubt on the extracts selected by the casebook�s editor.)