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Mapping the Law: Essays in Memory of Peter Birks edited by Andrew Burrows and Lord Rodger of Earlsferry

Peter Birks, the late Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford, in whose memory this book is published, is described by its editors as ‘the most influential English academic lawyer of his generation’ (1). The 33 essays that follow, written by academics and members of the judiciary who are themselves leaders in their respective fields, serve to explain why. The collection is divided into four parts: the English law of unjust enrichment and restitution; the comparative law of unjust enrichment and restitution; Roman law; and legal history. These four categories represent the principal objects of Birks’ own scholarship. Cutting across all four categories, two additional themes run through the book: Birks’ regard for taxonomy; and his passionate involvement in legal education. This review considers those two themes first before addressing the substance of the essays. The book owes its title—Mapping the Law—to Birks’ commitment to taxonomy. For him, finding a clear and rational structure for the law was not merely an academic enterprise; it would also serve the practitioner who, in Birks’ words, would ‘practise better if he can see a map of the whole law and can take a firm grip on the concepts and principles which fit its various parts together’.1 Many of the essays confirm, to some degree, the utility of the ‘Birksian’ taxonomical approach.2 Francis Rose, for example, applauds Birks’ ability to transcend the division between common law and equity in the search for a more appropriate mode of classification (27). Likewise, Robert Chambers draws attention to Birks’ criticism of the distinction between resulting and constructive trusts as a ‘flawed’ categorisation, the former describing the ‘effect of the trust’; the latter the reason for the trust’s creation (264). Other essays describe how Birks lifted examples of classification from the natural world to illustrate patterns in the law. Arianna PrettoSackmann, for example, explains that ‘the taxonomical potential of “labradors, dogs and canines”’ was used by Birks ‘as an illustration of the ascending scale of “loan, contract, consent”’ (476). In a similar vein, Joshua Getzler throws up a colourful image of Birks