While American Law: A Comparative Primer is not intended to exhaustively cover all the practical and theoretical components of U.S. laws, it offers a concise and approachable introduction to American legal history, philosophy, and practice. As noted in the preface, American Law is “a comparative law book in which American law receives 60% of the attention.” Throughout the book, De Geest offers relevant comparisons and contrasts between U.S. jurisprudence and legal traditions in European countries, which help to solidify his descriptions of U.S. legal concepts.
De Geest begins by outlining the general differences between common law and civil law systems, with a brief reference to the Islamic legal tradition. Topics covered include the impact of precedent on future rulings, reliance on statutes or codes, and judicial independence. The introduction posits that the U.S. is the “archetypical common law country” based on the preponderance of judge-made law, its legal realism philosophy, and America's recognition of law-making as a political activity, all of which are discussed in greater detail throughout the book.
After the introduction, this primer is divided into three parts, with the first section outlining the American case method. De Geest moves through characteristics of American courts that are unique to U.S. legal culture, such as the significance of judicial interpretation and the constitutional right to a jury trial in civil and criminal cases. Summaries of federal statutes and landmark court decisions helpfully demonstrate the practical effects of judge-made law. The last few chapters in this section shift to a description of U.S. law school programs. De Geest appears to target international students who wish to study American law by explaining how to read court opinions and recommending strategies to prepare for American law school classes and exams.
Part 2 discusses American legal culture, with an eye toward how common law and civil law systems differ philosophically. De Geest briefly reviews opposing schools of thought in this regard, such as universalism versus particularism, corporate cultural differences across jurisdictions, and religion and the law. The discussion on each of these topics takes up only a few pages, and De Geest offers background on these ideas in easy-to-understand terms, with limited legal jargon, which will be helpful to readers who are new to these theories.
One chapter in this section describes examples of legal realism and scholastic thinking in common law and civil law structures, respectively. De Geest demonstrates that although courts in both systems effectively create new laws and legal standards, jurists in civil law countries “camouflage” the policy decisions behind their rulings by searching for justifications in the underlying code after deciding how they want the law to change. De Geest persuasively uses court decisions in France and the U.S. to show how rulings in these jurisdictions differ in practice. Other topics in Part 2 include a summary of German legal philosophy and parental legal systems.
The final part of American Law outlines 13 American legal topics and how they compare and contrast with those of selected European jurisdictions. In the chapter on constitutional law, De Geest theorizes that although the U.S. is a common law system, constitutional jurisprudence closely resembles the civil law tradition. He remarks, for example, that the U.S. Supreme Court does not “openly admit that many constitutional rules are made up by judges.” Instead, the justices “first make the rules and then go through constitutional texts until they find a sentence in which they can read what they have already decided,” similar to civil law judges. Although the analysis is incomplete, due to the nature of this book as a primer, De Geest presents a fairly convincing hypothesis on American constitutional law in this regard. Part 3 also provides brief comparative summaries on contract law, bankruptcy law, and evidence, among other subjects.
American Law succeeds in succinctly describing the core attributes of U.S. law and jurisprudence in a straightforward manner. In this brief primer, De Geest manages to cover a wide range of topics from legal history to philosophy and jurisprudence to practical law. This book will be a useful introductory guide for a wide variety of audiences, particularly international law students and legal practitioners outside the U.S. Students and researchers in the U.S. who are new to comparative law may also benefit from reading American Law.
