Lawrence Cunningham muses on Contract law case books:
I’ve become aware of the current rich state of offerings in the field of Contracts. Never before have there been so many choices. Today, you have more than 20 books to choose from, all rich, up-to-date, teeming with wonderful old cases common across the batch, plus newer favorites and novelties.
He then ranks the top 17 books according to their Amazon sales data.
As a case book author, I was interested by Cunningham's description of why he thinks Contract law case books are so great:
The books are replete with notes, questions and comments, scholarly excerpts, problems, statutory and restatement selections, interdisciplinary perspectives and more. ...
Today’s editors all owe debts to earlier editors, but it would be a mistake to think that the greatest debts are to Langdell, father of the casebook, or even Williston or Corbin, who picked the best cases of the period, still taught today. The greatest debt really goes to Fuller, who should be seen as the father of today’s modern casebook, in contracts and other subjects. He added extensive notes, perfected the use of the squib cases, offered interdisciplinary and comparative insights, understood the importance of statutory and regulatory law alongside the common law, stressed the teaching of skills in addition to the study of doctrine and did nearly everything else that contemporary legal pedagogy endorses.
If those are the indicia of a great case book, Klein, Ramseyer, and Bainbridge fails pretty miserably. Extensive notes? We don't have them. Squib cases? Don't have them either. Interdisciplinary and comparative insights? Nope. Scholarly excerpts? Definitely not.
All we have are tightly edited cases, some analysis questions, and some problems designed to get people thinking about transactional skill issues. Since we're all oriented towards transactional practice, we try to makes sure that the questions and problems not only challenge the students to review and apply the law they have learned but also to tackle the business problems that gave rise to the cases they read.
Curiously, however, we're ranked # 1 on Amazon. So we must be doing something right.
I think part of our advantage is an incredibly detailed teacher's manual, which often features three way arguments about the cases. Many adopters have told me the case briefs in which the three of us disagree are the most useful, because it helps them sort out their own views of the case.
Another advantage might be our plethora of PowerPoint slides that we make available free to adopters.
Personally, however, I think our biggest advantage is that we put our case book on a diet. We kept it lean and clean. So assignments are a manageable length, which increases the chances students will actually read them. The cases mostly speak for themselves, letting users put their own spin on them.
In other words, I think our case book succeeds precisely because it doesn't have all the crap Cunningham thinks makes Contract case books so wonderful.
