Law school text books are basically just casebooks. Books filled with influential appellate court legal opinions about any given area of the law. Contracts, torts, criminal procedure and the like.
The cases themselves aren’t necessarily thematically similar, however. In contracts you might have a case about hairy palms in one part of the book, one about Hedy Lamar’s nose in another and one about what is or is not a chicken in yet another. The facts of the cases are all over the place. The idea is to teach basic concepts within each area of the law.
But there are some thematically coherent books for more specialized law classes. And one that may be of interest to some of you just came out. It’s a casebook in which all of the cases are baseball-related. Cases like Fleer Corp. v. Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., Selig v. United States, and State of Illinois v. Cicotte. There are A-Rod and George W. Bush and Hank Aaron-related cases too.
The idea is for law school courses aimed solely at baseball law. One wonders what the purpose of such courses may be -- take labor law or media law or something if you want get into sports law -- but law schools have never been short of ideas about how to make a buck.
Nor are the authors of this casebook, it seems. $120 a pop for this bad boy. Which reminds me how much I hated going to the law school bookstore back in the day. Still, if my bosses are reading this and they’d like to get me a gift. Well: hint hint.