Irving, Ronald. The Law is a Ass. U.K. Duckworth, 1999. Universal Law Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., Third Indian Reprint, 2008. Pp. 320, Including Bibliography and Index, INR 175
Lead author · Corresponding
Ranjan Kumar
Assistant Professor at National Law Institute University, Bhopal
Abstract
In Ronald Irving’s book The Law is A Ass there is a collection of anecdotes which augment legal quotations in context with the different parts of how law actually works in the judicial system. The scheme of the book is to convey philosophies, concepts, understandings and practices associated with Law and its appurtenances, which may not be amenable to a student of Law seeking answers to “what is the law”. However, no student of Law may ever be able to clearly claim that they never encountered perplexing philosophical question or a difficult question juxtaposing Law as it ‘is’ as against the Law as it ‘ought to be’. This book becomes important because of its capability to withstand such formalistic criticisms.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits remixing, adapting, and building upon the work for non-commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited.