Peter Hay’s The Law of the United States: An Introduction

Abstract

Peter Hay’s The Law of the United States: An Introduction, published by Routledge in January 2017, originated as a German-language text titled Einführung in das Recht der USA before appearing in an English translation prepared by two of Hay’s former students. At slightly more than 350 pages, the volume addresses an audience that the author himself describes in the preface as primarily non-American lawyers, scholars, and advanced students who require a systematic first encounter with a legal system that differs profoundly from the civil-law tradition in which most of them were trained. A secondary readership consists of American-trained lawyers or academics who seek a concise comparative overview. The book therefore occupies a somewhat unusual position in the English-language literature on American law: it is neither a casebook for first-year law students nor a narrative history for the general public, but rather a deliberate attempt to present the essential architecture of the United States legal order in a manner accessible to readers accustomed to codified systems and abstract doctrinal categories.