Avizandum Law Books

Welcome to the Spring edition of the Avizandum Newsletter! At least, we think it's Spring - it's a little hard to believe with the Siberian winds howling down Candlemaker Row.

Now that we have a date for Scotland's referendum on independence it's time to think seriously about how to vote! Andrew Goudie has written Scotland's Future (published by Dundee University Press) which promises to take an impartial look at constitutional change and what it means for Scotland.

Casting your minds back to the Jurisprudence course on the LLB some of you may recall the ideas of Ronald Dworkin, who died in February. One of the greatest legal thinkers of recent times he believed that human dignity was central to thinking about the law. In his most recent book Justice for Hedgehogs he wrote, 'Without dignity our lives are only blinks of duration. But if we manage to lead a good life well, we create something more. We write a subscript to our mortality. We make our lives tiny diamonds in the cosmic sands.' Not a book about the law appertaining to small prickly creatures (although one customer, who spotted it in the window of the shop, did in fact ask if that was its subject) Justice for Hedgehogs is an elegantly written essay on the centrality of moral values to the law.It has been newly reprinted following Dworkin's death.

Turning to more prosaic matters: the new edition of The Fingertip Guide to Criminal Law has recently been published. A new book by Robert Shiels on Criminal Advocacy and Defective Representation is due in May and a second edition of Prisons, Prisoners and Parole (the only Scots book on this topic) is due in April.

A new title in the SULI series, written by Laura Macgregor of the University of Edinburgh and dealing with The Law of Agency In Scotland is due late June.

Lastly, Bloomsbury have published an Environmental Law Handbook which is in fact the 4th edition of the title previously published by Butterworths. The last edition came out in 2001 so this might be a valuable addition to your library if you practise in this area!