Reviews
To write a book which will be of as much interest and help to practical lawyers and judges as to academic lawyers and students is a real achievement. That is all the more true when, as here, the subject matter of the book is deceptively simple on its face, but turns out on examination to be technical and complex. Sarah Green, with her distinguished academic experience, and John Randall, with his justifiably formidable reputation at the Bar, have produced a book which reflects the strengths of both the academic legal world and the practical legal world, while avoiding the weaknesses of either. All lawyers, and their clients and students, have much to thank them for.From the Foreword, David Neuberger, House of Lords, May 2009This fairly slim volume, written jointly by a practitioner on one side and an academic on the other, is a highly informative and workmanlike guide to the theory behind it, its development, and its contemporary ins and outs.Overall, this is an excellent little reference book which ought to be on the shelves of any member of the Bar. Not only does it provide a fully-comprehensive academic introduction to a little-known tort.Buy this book: or at the very least, make sure your chambers library gets a copy. Or even two: you never know when someone else in chambers might also have a conversion problem on his hands.Andrew TettenbornThe BarristerIssue 45No practitioner using this book should now be confused as to which tort may be invoked and where, or as to what remedies will be available in any given circumstances. Furthermore, the detailed index and meticulous cross-referencing, both within and between chapters, should help ensure that anyone using this book for practical purposes will not overlook anything of significance.Their eminently sensible approach has the distinct advantage of enabling them to tackle a range of related questions that have dogged academics and courts elsewhere in the Common law world for years ... on each of these issues ... the authors' answers are both elegant and lawyerly. The elegance derives from their concise and systematic approach, while the lawyerliness inheres in the careful supporting of arguments by reference to a range of persuasive judgements in other common law jurisdictions.For all that it may be a fairly slender volume, The Tort of Conversion is packed with learning, containing as it does mini-theses on the true gist of conversion, the nature of property and the legal meaning of possession. Throughout ... the arguments are supported by a wealth of references to primary and secondary legal sources, both ancient and modern, domestic and comparative.It may be a very long time before we can disagree conclusively with Sir John Salmond's famous observation that "conversion is a region still darkened with the mists of legal formalism, through which no man will find his way" ... But if a way out of this juridical quagmire is ever to be forged, Green and Randall, in this superb volume, must be acknowledged to have taken the critical first steps.John MurphyCambridge Law JournalVolume 69, Part 2Green and Randall's thoughtful book is a most welcome addition to the conversion scholarship, and is the first modern English treatise on the tort. The authors have successfully negotiated a difficult path to ensure that the work will be of interest and us to both scholars and practitioners.As the first modern sustained treatise on conversion it will no doubt be highly influential upon its future development. The work is thought provoking, does not shy away from controversies and is an academic challenge to those with conflicting conceptions of the tort.Phillip MorganLegal StudiesVolume 30, No 3, Sep 2010
