Legalese

IN MY last column, I made a pejorative reference to a magazine--which may or may not exist--called Physicist's Weekly. At the time, I thought such a title was the most ridiculous possible for a magazine or trade journal. It seemed even more obscure than Statistician's Monthly which does exist and is stocked in Hilles. Ah, but I was wrong. I had never been to Langdell Library.

After making several trips to the Law Library in the past few days, I found that Physicist's Weekly doesn't even make the list of publications appealing to ridiculously narrow audiences. Certainly The Accountant's Digest appeals to a much smaller and more select audience. So do The Accountant's Journal, Accounting Review, and Accounting Trends and Techniques.

Moreover, I found it hard to believe that there are enough readers around to keep 11 civil liberties publications afloat. But I guess there are, because Langdell stocks them. They are, in nearly alphabetical order: Civil Justice Quarterly, Civil Liberties, Civil Liberties Alert, Civil Liberties Bulletin, Civil Liberties Docket, Civil Liberties Reporter, Civil Liberties Review, Civil Liberty, Civil Rights Digest, Civil Rights Update, and the ever-popular Civil Rights Newsletter of Colorado. The last periodical must exist because the people of the great state of Colorado find that the national civil liberties publications don't appeal to them.

The truly diligent will find articles from the Ajmer-Merwara Law Journal, the Adelaide Law Journal, the Adelphia Law Journal, the Aligarh Law Journal, and the Allahabad Law Journal. I had expected Langdell to stock Law Reviews and Journals from colleges all over the world, but not from schools (are these schools?) I had never heard of--and those are only the "A" s.

Boston College is a school I had heard of. But I was unprepared for the institution to stock six different law reviews: The B.C. International and Comparative Law Review, The B.C. Industrial and Commercial Law Review, The B.C. Law Review, The B.C. Environmental Affairs Law Review, The B.C. Third World Law Review, and The B.C. Intramural Law Review.

What kinds of articles does that last journal publish? Perhaps guest writers discuss cheating in House Football? Or maybe the legality of the infield fly rule in House softball? Maybe free agency by transfer students in really competitive intramural sports.

THE AMAZING thing about most of these publications was not that Langdell stocks them but that they exist at all. It did not surprise me, however, that there is something called the New South Wales Police News. It was surprising to find that this publication can be unearthed somewhere in the confines of the Harvard Law Library. The same goes for the annual reports of the Law Society of the Cape of Good Hope and the Law Society of Prince Edward Island. Even more surprising is the ready accessibility of McDonald's Licensing Laws for New South Wales to anybody with a Harvard I.D. If you are planning to open a Burger King or Wendy's franchise in New South Wales, however, you may have to go elsewhere to find the licensing laws.