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The Jersey Law Review - June 2004
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Dear Sir,
It is easy to overreact to the sort of condescending book review written by Richard McMahon in your February 2004 issue, when the work under review is that of someone one knows well - in this case my partner Gordon Dawes, who had written the first proper text book on Guernsey law.
As I keep telling my more splenetic colleagues, it is always wise to sleep on it, and I have done so. Having returned to McMahon’s review, I am still irritated, and not merely because of the de haut en bas style.
McMahon says that this is not a practitioner’s work; rather, it is “a source into which to dip in order to look for something more detailed”. Really? Are practitioners so inept that, for example, all of the legislation has to be trotted out? How then would he deal with the earlier criticism that “the style frequently adopted when dealing with legislation involves almost a section by section description of provisions”?
And what about “it is also annoying to note the omission of the usual comma immediately prior to the year when citing “pure” domestic enactments.”? I know that in the Law Officers’ Chambers grown men spend many of their waking moments brooding over commas, even during the afternoon tea ceremony, but, really – get a life.
Dawes’s work is quite remarkable. He takes the widest possible subject and converts a blank sheet (actually, 789 of them) into a useful, readable and entertaining work of scholarship. Not a practitioner’s book? Rubbish. I bet every practitioner refers to it on a frequent basis, even if he doesn’t admit to it. Even Crown Advocates don’t know everything.
I do accept that it was somewhat idiosyncratic of Dawes not to include chapters on liquor licensing (it really is quite astonishing that a court which has unlimited civil and criminal jurisdiction actually concerns itself with liquor licensing, but doubtless that has its roots in Guernsey’s Methodism) and shipping: after all, we are a Merchant Shipping Act Port of Registry.
Those minor cavils apart, the book is a great accomplishment, and will be of much use to the Bar.
Yours faithfully,
R.A. PERROT
Ozannes, 1 Le Marchant Street,
St. Peter Port, Guernsey, GY1 4HP.
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