Cambridge University Press law e-books

By | 18 July 2014

The Law Bod has taken out a trial subscription to all the law titles available via CUP’s University Publishing Online. CUPThis means holders of an Oxford Single Sign On have full-text access to all law titles until 13 July 2015. At that date we shall assess how useful the package has proved to be, before deciding whether or not to continue a subscription.

How do you find what is available? Well already normal searches for books in the SOLO Oxford Collections tab should be returning new View Online options for individual CUP titles: you don’t have to do anything different, just enjoy the results!  For example, supposing you were hoping to consult Hathaway and Foster, The Law of Refugee Status, your SOLO search now comes back with this result captured in the screen shot below: in this instance the View Online will take you to the 2nd edition … the print/hard copy of which is not yet available in the Bodleian.

View online link is to 2nd ed - which we have not yet got in hard copy!

View online link is to 2nd ed – which we have not yet got in hard copy!

But it is not always the case that the e-book must be the more uptodate. For example: the Law Bod has the second (2010) edition of Aust’s Handbook of International Law at Internat 500 A932a2, but the online version is still only the 2005 first edition. The bibliographical records uploaded into SOLO for the e-books have been supplied by the publisher, and unfortunately they do not always make the edition statement obvious in the SOLO result screens.

If you would rather examine the contents of the Law package as a whole, there is a link to Cambridge University Press eBooks (law only) (trial) via OxLIP+

This takes you to the home page which is All titles – listed apparently alphabetically by title.

CUP e-law

The “apparently” is the comment of an old-school cataloguer finding it hard to come to terms with modern ways! It is a hot afternoon so forgive my peevishness: but I don’t find listing – to give 3 examples –  A Common Law Theory of Judicial Review only under A, or An Institutional Approach to the Responsibility to Protect only under A, or The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights only under T sensible ways to go!

Incidentally, the All titles list (which is visible on this home page) starts off with the following works ‘Armed Attack’ and Article 51 of the UN Charter‘Crimes against Peace’ and International Law, ‘Fair and Equitable Treatment’ in International Investment Law, and Jus Post Bellum and Transitional Justice (before the titles beginning with A, starting with A Code of Gentoo Laws; or, Ordinations of the Pundits.) This seems to be the only place these four titles are listed: you cannot for example find Jus Post Bellum and Transitional Justice under J which is where I have been trained to look first.

But I really should stop griping – and point out that there is an Advanced Search option near top right which may be a more sensible way of mining the list for the wonders available from this distinguished academic publisher! After all,  this is a very wide ranging collection with titles to aid study in all the following areas of law:
Arbitration, Dispute Resolution and Mediation
Comparative Law
Competition Law
Constitutional and Administrative Law
Contract Law
Corporate Law
Criminal Law
E-Commerce Law
Employment Law
English Legal System
Environmental law
Equity and Trusts
European Law
Evidence
Family Law
Financial Law
Human Rights
Humanitarian Law
Intellectual Property
International Trade Law
Jurisprudence
Law and Economics
Law: general interest
Legal History
Legal Skills and Practice
Medico-Legal, Bioethics and Health Law
Private International Law
Property Law
Public International Law
Socio-Legal Studies
Sports Law
Taxation Law
Tort Law
UN and International Organisations
US law