Black's Law Dictionary review

Bryan Garner (born Nov. 17, 1958) is an American lawyer, grammarian, and lexicographer. He also writes on jurisprudence (and occasionally golf). He is the author of over 25 books, the best-known of which are Garner’s Modern English Usage (4th ed. 2016) and Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (2012—coauthored with Justice Antonin Scalia), as well as four unabridged editions of Black’s Law Dictionary. He serves as Distinguished Research Professor of Law at Southern Methodist University. He also teaches from time to time at the University of Texas School of Law, Texas A&M School of Law, and Texas Tech School of Law. In 2009, he was named Legal-Writing and Reference-Book Author of the Decade at a Burton Awards ceremony at the Library of Congress. He has received many other awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Book Award, the Scribes Book Award, the Bernie Siegan Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for Plain Language. His work has played a central role in our understanding of modern judging, advocacy, grammar, English usage, legal lexicography, and the common-law system of precedent. His books are frequently cited by American courts of all levels, including the United States Supreme Court.

Black's Law Dictionary review by Bryan Garner

For nearly 130 years, Black’s Law Dictionary has been the gold standard for the language of the law.The greatly expanded 11th edition, with new material on every page, is at once the most practical, comprehensive, scholarly, and authoritative law dictionary ever published. With clarity and rigor, it defines more than 55,000 law-related words and phrases, recording their historical and present-day nuances. This edition introduces 3,500 new terms, including accountability, anticipatory self-defense, cyber force, Islamic law, Jewish law, legal moralism, legal reasoning, moral equality, peacekeeping, remotely piloted warfare, right to rebel, and umbrella clause.More than 900 Latin maxims have been added, newly translated, and carefully indexed for this edition, making Black’s Law Dictionary the most thorough and reliable source for these essential and often elusive items.Headwords are given their dates of earliest known use in English-language sources, giving dictionary users a greater sense of historical context. Black’s Law Dictionary is the only legal dictionary to provide such data.The extensive bibliography lists the more than 1,000 classics of legal literature that are briefly quoted throughout the dictionary to amplify the user’s understanding of legal terminology. Each of the more than 6,000 quotations locates a critical and otherwise hard-to-find explanation of the terms under discussion.Editor in Chief Bryan A. Garner, the world’s leading legal lexicographer, has assembled an unmatched roster of academic and practicing contributors who have vetted every term for accuracy. Never has such a distinguished lineup of legal talent been arrayed in support of a legal reference work.If you’re using an edition that was current when you were in law school, you’re out of date. If you think a dictionary is useful mainly as a doorstop, you haven’t browsed the pages of this 11th edition. Once you do, you’ll find it hard to put down. Within moments, you’ll probably find something you want to cite.