In 1871, Christopher Columbus Langdell, Dean of the Harvard Law School, published_x000D_ what is held to be the first casebook in the common law world—A Selection of_x000D_ Cases on the Law of Contracts (1871). It should come as no surprise that, more than_x000D_ a century later, books that combine legal materials with analysis and commentary_x000D_ are still an invaluable part of legal education. The number of relevant cases in any_x000D_ given area only increases with time, and therefore books that harvest, organise and_x000D_ analyse the sheer bulk of relevant legal material are perhaps more needed than ever.

The project which gave rise to this book was motivated by a dearth of existing scholarship on the role of plurality within (as opposed to among) Southeast Asian nations (at p 5); how plurality can serve as a "source of constitutional dynamism" rather than of "constitutional contestations" (at p 6); and the role of constitutional practice (as opposed to the features which institutions possess on paper) (at p 6). The book aims to address these gaps through a collection of essays, each of which focuses on the constitutional orders in one or two Southeast Asian countries. As the editors Jaclyn L Neo and Bui Ngoc Son recognise, the diversity of experiences and constitutional responses is such that "there is no single model of pluralist constitutions in Southeast Asia" (at p 15). After all, the nature and effects of pluralism depend on the extent of division of a society and the types of plurality (at p 10). Moreover, because pluralism itself is 'dynamic' in the sense that "a pluralist constitution should be able to reconsider new constitutional claims and modify its existing settlement to address them" (at pp 12-13), drawing comparisons is not straightforward because of changes within each country over time. Yet, the book does a good job of presenting the complexities of each country's constitutional order; and, as the editors point_x000D_ out in their useful introduction, interesting patterns and contrasts emerge when the various essays are placed side by side (at pp 15-18). The result is a study that is more than the sum of its parts.

The landscape for Singapore textbooks has seen nothing less than a sea change since Singapore’s independence from the British. Lye Lin Heng’s Landlord and Tenant (1990) was the third volume in this second phase of this change. It is with great satisfaction that we welcome the much belated second edition of Professor Lye Lin Heng’s pioneering text, with Koh Swee Yen and Elaine Chew joining as co-authors. Although it comes some thirty years after the first edition, and is thus indubitably belated, its timing could not have been more propitious.

Corporate structures across different jurisdictions are frequently utilised for commercial,_x000D_ profit-making purposes. Notwithstanding this common underpinning, there is undeniably "real" (John Armour, Henry Hansmann & Reinier Kraakman, "What is Corporate Law?" in The Anatomy of Corporate Law—A Comparative and Functional Approach (2009) at p. 1 [Armour]) divergence in the jurisdiction-specific corporate laws that govern them. And diversity is necessary fodder for comparative scholarship, a diversity that this book nabashedly celebrates. The book presents case studies on how the derivative action operates in seven selected Asian jurisdictions. In addition, the editors author three overview chapters which attempt to draw the diverse threads together to present a coherent whole. As editors Puchniak, Baum and Ewing-Chow explain in their preface, a project which began as a quest for similarities revealed an "inconvenient truth" and that is that there is no single_x000D_ "grand theory" that unites the operation of the derivative action across the chosen Asian jurisdictions (at p. 90). Instead, how the derivative action functions in the different jurisdictions profiled can be accurately understood only if the multiplicity of local factors in each jurisdiction is duly considered and analysed. However, the book is itself necessarily predicated on a legal convergence, albeit admittedly a broad one - a convergence that is manifested in the governance strategy adopted by the corporate laws of the different jurisdictions: the conferment of a litigation decision right on minority shareholders. Indeed, comparative studies in corporate laware often informed by the "impressive" (Armour at p. 1) underlying uniformity of the corporate form, and the laws that govern it. As Armour, ansmann and Kraakman observed, "[b]usiness corporations have a fundamentally similar set of legal characteristics - and face a fundamentally similar set of legal problems - in all jurisdictions" (Armour at p. 1). The derivative action is one such common response to a_x000D_ common corporate law problem.

There are a number of ways to writing a law book. One is the traditional 'black letter' approach, by providing information on what the current rules and principles of law are and how to use those rules and principles to solve legal problems. This approach assumes that legal issues are by and large separate and distinct from normal everyday activity. However, law is essentially a socio-political institution. For corporate law, there is an added dimension of economic considerations. Therefore, it is no longer sufficient for authors writing on an applied area of law to produce a purely expository text without considering its non-legal context. Iain MacNeil's book is one of such books that provide more than just the legal principles and regulatory rules relevant to financial investment. He also tries to draw from other disciplines relevant theories and principles in order to introduce an element of critical awareness and assessment into the areas considered.

The author of this treatise holds the positions of Emeritus Professor of Law, University_x000D_ of Sydney, General Editor of the Journal of Contract Law and Consultant to Herbert Smith Freehills. Earlier versions of Emeritus Professor Carter's treatise on breach of contract (previously published in 1984 and 1991, and substantially reworked and retitled as a 2012 first edition with Hart Publishing) have taken their place in the canon of leading works focusing primarily on this topic (other recent additions include John Stannard and David Capper, Termination for Breach of Contract (2014) and Neil Andrews, Malcolm Clarke, Andrew Tettenborn and Graham Virgo, Contractual Duties: Performance, Breach, Termination and Remedies (rev 2017)).

Given the competitive nature of legal academia today, anyone believing in free market economics would seldom find a PhD thesis or monograph that makes one wonder why it had not hitherto been written. Rachel Leow’s book on attribution in private law, based on her Cambridge PhD, falls into that category. Like the proverbial twenty dollar note lying before the economist, you may not pick it up because rationally it cannot be there.