BOOK REVIEWS
CHRONIQUE BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE
Alex L. Parks. The Law and Practice of Marine Insurance and Average.
Centreville, Md: Cornell Maritime Press, 1987, 2 vols. Pp. 1516 [$190.00
U.S.]. Reviewed by William Tetley, Q.C.*
Should an author review another author’s book? Should a book be
reviewed by a friend of the author?
These are difficult questions but not too difficult when the book is a
good one, and The Law and Practice of Marine Insurance and Average1 is
a very good book.
In November, 1987, Alex Parks took me aside and told me that he had
just learned he had inoperable cancer. A day or two later he showed a number
of us the advance copies of his book which he had just received, the sum-
mation of a lifetime of law practice, teaching and scholarship. Early this
year Alex Parks died; that friendly, generous, humorous man will be missed
by hundreds of friends not merely in Portland, Oregon, but around the
world. He has left, however, something which very few people are able to
leave –
an oeuvre which thousands will remember him by.
Persons interested in marine insurance will be pleased to know that at
last there is a book on both American and United Kingdom marine insu-
rance law as well as references to the law of Canada, Australia and New
Zealand. Parks collaborated with Brian Waltham and Jonathan Lux from
London, Jack Cunningham from Vancouver, Derek Hentze from Sydney,
T.J. Broadmore from Wellington, Carter Quinbey from San Francisco, Mar-
tin Detels Jr. from Seattle and Paul Wonacott from Portland. Parks, in his
typically generous fashion, describes them as “Associate Authors” on the
frontispiece. With the help of these experts the book is able to cut across
jurisdictions so that in genuine comparative law fashion, inner truths are
revealed which otherwise would not have come to light in the exposition
of a single national law.
The U.K Marine Insurance Act, 19062 is the mother of all Anglo-Saxon
insurance acts including the acts of British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario,
New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. It was a brilliant codification of existing
*Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University.
1A.L. Parks, The Law and Practice ofMarine Insurance andAverage (Centreville, Md: Cornell
Maritime Press, 1987) [hereinafter Marine Insurance and Average].
2(U.K.), 6 Edw. 7, c. 41.
McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 33
marine insurance law by Sir Mackenzie Chalmers, the legal giant who also
drafted the Sale of Goods Act, 18933 and the Bills of Exchange Act, 1882.4
America has never adopted a marine insurance but as Parks pointed out,
the U.S. follows the 1906 Act so that the jurisprudence from England, the
U.S. and other nations flows back and forth enriching the law of those who
receive and of those who give.
Throughout his text Parks, like American judges and practitioners, fol-
lows the 1906 Act and its jurisprudence. It is an incredible tribute to Chal-
mers, and Parks himself pays generous tribute:
“Chalmer’s introduction to the first edition will be found reproduced in Chal-
mer’s Marine Insurance Act, 1906 (8th ed. by E.R. Hardy Ivamy, London:
Butterworths, 1976). This little volume is a classic and should be in the library
of every underwriter, broker, and admiralty lawyer involved in the field of
marine insurance.” 5
The same could be said of Parks’ book.
Parks has a light and unaffected style. His purpose is to inform –
he
does not presuppose knowledge and hence this very large text in two vol-
umes. There is a fine historical introduction with not too much time spent
on the oft-told tale of Lloyd’s coffee house. Thereafter, he explains consci-
entiously and in detail the marine insurance contract, the policy, principles
of construction (but not the civil law rules of interpretation), the relationship
of agents and brokers, the premium, insurable interest, disclosures and rep-
resentations, warranties, the perils clause, exclusions, the Inchmaree clause,
actual and constructive loss, general average, salvage and sue and labor. It
is all there.
But that is only volume one. The second volume deals with the running
down clause, particular average, P & I., shipbuilders’ liability, subrogation,
direct action, reinsurance, practice and procedure.
Each reader will have his own favorite chapters – mine were general
average, P & I. and direct action – or at least they attracted my particular
interest at this time. In each chapter, Parks presented a succinct explanation
of the maritime law of the subject in question before explaining the marine
insurance law attached to it.
Is the text perfect? No, but what is? The book has a very limited index
while the discussion deals only with common law jurisdictions ignoring the
3(U.K.), 56 & 57 Vict., c. 71.
4(U.K.), 45 & 46 Vict., c. 61.
5 Marine Insurance and Average, supra, note 1 at 11 n. 6.
1988]
BOOK REVIEWS
civil law. On the other hand, the common law and the Marine Insurance
Act, 19066 have dominated world marine insurance for at least two centuries.
Alex Parks is gone but his friends will remember him while his book
will attract new friends for a long time.
Walt Whitman said:
Camarado this is no book you hold. This is a friend. And you forgive your
friends. You like everything they do with good intentions.
Marine Insurance and Average, this beautifully presented, readable
oeuvre will be a fiend to all who read and use it, whether or not they knew
Alex Parks.
6Supra, note 2.
REVUE DE DROIT DE McGILL
[Vol. 33
D. Lasok & PA. Stone. Conflict of Laws in the European Community.
Abingdon, Oxford: Professional Books, 1987. Pp. xx, 460 [E24.5]. Reviewed
by P. John Kozyris*
Conflict of Laws in the European Community’ constitutes an excellent
conspectus of the various kinds of conflict-of-laws issues that may arise in
the multitudinous contexts of the European Economic Community
(“EEC”). Conflict of laws is broadly conceived to include most of private
international law, extending beyond choice of law to questions of quasi-
federalism as well as to jurisdiction and judgments. The authors appear
thoroughly conversant with the relevant aspects of EEC law, including in
particular the decisions of the EEC Court of Justice, as well as with the
national law pertaining to the same subject. The book’s style maximizes
clear, effective communication, and its chapters are packed with valuable
data. In fact, so much information is concisely imparted, that the work
resembles a compact but also sophisticated encyclopedia. At the same time,
however, the nature of the work precludes any substantial discussion of
conflict-of-laws doctrine and methodology as well as any sustained com-
parisons with other private international law systems.
The book begins with the “federal” or “supranational” aspects of the
EEC, its institutions and its legal position. The legal personality and status
of the Community and its capacity both in the international (e.g. its jus
missionis and jus tractatus) and in the domestic (e.g. as employer or tort-
feasor) contexts give rise to many questions of choosing the applicable law.
To the extent that the EEC treaties and secondary norms govern these issues,
they prevail over the domestic law of the member states as the supreme
law of the Community. But a good number of issues are not expressly cov-
ered by these sources and, therefore, they are subject to national law under
domestic conflicts principles aided sometimes by implications drawn from
the pertinent Community law. For example, Article 215(1) of the Rome
Treaty2 provides that “the contractual liability of the Community shall be
governed by the law applicable to the contract in question”, but gives no
guidance on how such law is to be chosen. The related disputes may be
adjudicated by the national courts under their own conflicts rules. When
the parties refer the dispute to the European Court under Article 181 of the
Rome Treaty,3 a new composite system of conflicts must be generated by
such court.
‘Professor of Law, The Ohio State University.
ID. Lasok & P. Stone, Conflict of Laws in the European Community (Abingdon, Oxford:
Professional Books, 1987).
2Treaty establishing EEC, 25 March 1957, 298 U.N.T.S. 3.
3Ibid.
1988]
CHRONIQUE BIBLIOGRAPHIQUE
The second “federal” question is even more directly wedded to conflicts
choices: it relates to the international applicability of Community law, es-
pecially its extraterritoriality in contexts such as antitrust law. Most of the
answers here are contained in the text of the Community law itself.
In addition to issues of Community personality, institutions, status,
legal order and internationality, those provisions of Community law which
seek to effectuate the purposes of the Community, for example the unifi-
cation of the internal market, often use terms which need definition or
implementation at the national level on a residual basis and which may
present problems of choice of law. For example, the rules which prohibit
discrimination on the grounds of nationality leave the determination of
nationality to domestic law, including its own conflicts rules.
A whole chapter of the book is devoted to an explication of the various
substantive areas where Community law in effect pre-empts, supplements
or at least seeks to harmonize the various domestic laws in areas such as
labour, social security, competition, the professions, banking, insurance and
product liability. Choice-of-law issues surface here in an incidental manner,
e.g. matters related to social security are relegated to the law of a person’s
workplace (lex loci laboris, Article 13 of Regulation 1408/71) or exception-
ally to that of his habitual residence. Special mention is made regarding the
Directive on Products Liability4 which is silent both on the sphere of appli-
cability of its own provisions and on the domestic law applicable to those
issues that the Directive does not cover. The authors propose certain creative
and sound solutions focusing on the place of delivery of the product to the
ultimate purchaser.
In searching for a conflicts model for the EEC, the authors next briefly
review and contrast the Polish and American systems, opting in favour of
legislative codification in the Continental pattern rather than leaving the
matters to the slow and fragmentary case law process.
The short discussion on the American law of jurisdiction and choice
of law is very well informed and up-to-date. It makes many valid, albeit
occasionally excessive, criticisms of the inherent uncertainties, as well as
the biases, built in the new American approaches which maximize the
choices available to plaintiffs and favour the lexfori.
There follows an elaborate analysis and commentary on the Brussels
Convention on Jurisdiction and Enforcement ofJudgments in Civil and Com-
mercial Matters of 1968. 5 As is typical for most of the work, the authors
4Directive on the Approximation of the Laws, Regulations and Administrative Provisions of
the Member States concerning Liability for Defective Products, 85/374 OJ L210/29.
s78 OJ L304/36 (in original 1968 form); 78 OJ L304/77 (as am. in 1978).
McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 33
do not limit themselves to stating the law “as is” but offer refreshing in-
terpretative suggestions and blunt opinions of what they view as wrong turns
either of the Community institutions or of the member states.
The last major part of the book is devoted to the EEC Convention on
the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations of 19806 which has not as
yet come into effect. The discussion is thorough and provocative, and in-
cludes considerable comparative law information, especially as it regards
the notions of “characteristic performance” and “mandatory rules” which
are unfamiliar in the common law systems. The comprehensiveness of the
book is exemplified by its inclusion of chapters on choice of law for bank-
ruptcy and for torts, and on arbitration, as well as by the the addition of
appendices with the full texts of the two major EEC Conventions.
Given the tight packaging of so much information in the book, the
index is necessarily brief and only indicative of the general area where the
search should be conducted. But with those limits, it is first rate.
I am not aware of any other single-volume source in the English lan-
guage on the private international law implications of the European Com-
munity. As such, it is highly valuable to all conflicts specialists outside the
EEC who need a compact, lucid, intelligent, comprehensive guide in that
area.
60J L266.
