Two polemics inspired this issue of the Tulsa Law Review. Writing in the May 2009 Texas Law Review, Levinson bemoaned the decline of book reviews in law student edited journals. Noting that a majority of the so-called "top" law reviews published no book reviews at all, he complained of the "willful refusal ... of America's leading law reviews to serve as a venue for serious discussion of important books relevant ... to thinking about law." n1 In his view, "both serious scholars and general readers alike" regard "book reviews as invaluable filtering mechanisms" for determining what of the many works published merit reading and which are best left on library shelves. Graber, in the spring 2002 issue of Law and Social Inquiry, had earlier condemned the failure of prominent law professors to engage relevant political-science literature. ....
Both are delighted that the reviews that follow not only think critically about major books recently published on constitutionalism, jurisprudence, and legal history, but also provide opportunities either for law professors to discuss works by political scientists/historians or for political scientists/historians to engage law professors on subjects of mutual interest and concern.
The volume includes reviews by Mark Tushnet, Gerald Rosenberg, Jamal Greene, Daniel Hamilton, Ernest Young, Rebecca Zietlow, Stephen Feldman and Julie Novkov, among others, who cover a wide range of works on subjects of interest to legal historians. The book review's table of contents is here. The volume itself is accessible through Lexis-Nexis.
