Gardens or Graveyards of Scholarship? Festschriften in the Literature of the Common Law

Abstract

The German word Festschrift has become the universally accepted term for a published collection of legal essays written by several authors to honour a distinguished jurist or mark a significant legal event. The genre dates back to the mid-19th century on the Continent, but until recently it has made little impression on the literature of the common law. Less than a dozen legal Festschriften had been published in the United Kingdom up to 1968, but since then more than a hundred legal Festschriften have appeared. This article traces the rise of the legal Festschrift in the United Kingdom, and attempts to account for its recent popularity. The nature of legal Festschriften, and the processes and problems of their production, are addressed. Emphasis is placed on the systemic failure to index contributions to legal Festschriften. This gap in the bibliographic resources of the common law consigns an enormous amount of scholarship to oblivion; hence the reference in the title to 'graveyards of scholarship'. An indication of the magnitude of this problem is that the total number of contributions to legal Festschriften between 1969 and 2000 almost equals the total number of articles published in three leading British law reviews over the same period. The article concludes that the failure to index contributions to legal Festschriften by author and subject matter is lamentable, and undercuts the reasons for publishing legal Festschriften in the first place. This article is prompted by the appearance of an ever-increasing number of books of essays honouring distinguished common lawyers. As a genre of legal writing it is of recent origin in the common law world, but it follows a much longer Continental tradition. Up to 1968 there are fewer than a dozen such books published in the United Kingdom—the comparable figure in Germany alone being 70 times that—whereas today they are pouring forth in spate in the