Gifts a study in comparative law by Richard Hyland

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BOOK REVIEW

GIFTS - A STUDY IN COMPARATIVE LAW

By Richard Hyland

ISBN: 978-0-19-534336-6

Oxford University Press

www.oup.co.uk

GIFTS: SHOULD WE BEWARE OF GREEKS

(OR ANYBODY ELSE FOR THAT MATTER)

BEARING THEM?

An appreciation by Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend. But if she accepts them as a gift, the lass may need a lawyer if her relationship with the giver by any chance turns sour.

Here is a great –and we mean monumental -- book on gifts; primarily the legal aspects and the ramifications of giving and receiving gifts across a representative range of western cultures, from England (assume that means the United Kingdom) and the United States to Spain, Italy, France and Belgium. India is also included as the world’s largest English speaking democracy with, of course, a common law tradition. References are also made to Germany and Switzerland. The perspective is legal; the fascination universal.

The book, as author Richard Hyland is happy to state, is not just for lawyers. Conceivably, folk whose idea of reading a law book extends about as far as novels by John Grisham might well find it a riveting read, despite the often challenging concepts and legal terminology therein.

The book is indeed the work of a formidable, retentive and scholarly mind. The research involved is massive and meticulous. The subject matter, as the subtitle indicates, is comparative law, the author having mentioned that a professor of his, early in his career, convinced him that the only way to think about the law is comparatively. The professor in question was regarded as one of the world’s leading comparativists -- a word that’s admittedly new to us and the spelling checker, but we like it.

Hyland, quite rightly, has intended this impressive work of scholarship and erudition for four kinds of readers:

• The lawyer or academic in the United States or abroad who seeks a wider perspective on gift law, including the law of trusts and estates and of contract and restitution

• The writer or teacher in the field of comparative law

• Professionals in disciplines other than the law

• …and lastly, the individual who thinks about gift giving ‘from the perspective of the humanities and the social sciences’– and here is where the interdisciplinary nature of the book comes into its own

Ever since those conniving Greeks fooled the Trojans with that infamous wooden horse full of warriors, it seems that certain legal minds have looked upon gift bearing with suspicion and here we’re talking about matters political or dynastic, like gifts of valuable chattels or acreage.

The very first sentence of ‘Gifts’ states that ‘the French revolutionaries abhorred gift giving….This book explores why the legal mind so often concludes that gift giving is a danger to society.’ Later in the text, it’s pointed out that the Romans prohibited gift giving between spouses.

Another example: in the impressively extensive bibliography, there is a list of over a dozen books/ articles on the ancient custom of potlatch (ceremonially giving valuables away partly to demonstrate your status within the tribe) among the Kwakiutl people of British Columbia in Canada, which infamously was banned by law between about 1884 and 1951.

What is there about the authoritarian mind-set that likes banning things, including the giving of gifts? This is only one of the puzzling phenomena Professor Hyland’s ‘Gifts’ addresses. Our advice is to buy it, borrow it, but don&rsq