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British Law Journals as a Resource for Political Studies

Other peoples’ books and journals often seem, and sometimes are, more interesting and relevant than those pertaining to what one thinks of as one’s own academic discipline a phenomenon which owes a lot, not just to the well-known ‘grass is greener . . . ’ syndrome, but also to the artificial way in which disciplinary boundaries are delineated. It also owes a good deal to the aura of mystery, even exoticism, that tends to surround unfamiliar corners of the library, reinforced by the way in which the artificial disciplinary categories just mentioned are translated into the daunting spatial realities of the Dewey decimal classification system. The territorial habits of academic library users would make an interesting anthropological study. The modest purpose of this essay is to build a small bridge across one such interdisciplinary chasm by demonstrating that law journals have potentially a lot to offer the British student of politics; and that a voyage of discovery, at least from one end of the library to the other, or perhaps even a journey to a specialist law library elsewhere, may yield worthwhile dividends to the adventurous political scientist. The emphasis will be on British, and mostly on English, publications. This is mainly in order to keep the discussion within manageable bounds and should not of course be taken to condone Anglocentric parochialism, still less to imply any negative imputation towards overseas journals. Even within these bounds, coverage must necessarily be selective and the omission of reference to any journal should not be taken as implying any adverse comment upon it.