Brox/Walker Review, Common Law of Obligations – Jurists

When a textbook reaches the forty-seventh edition, it’s clearly worth something. The “General Law of Obligations” from the “Fundamentals of Law” series, founded by Hans Brooks and supplemented by Wolf-Dietrich Walker since the 28th edition, has been updated again this year (2023) and is published by Verlag CH Beck. This is a classic textbook of almost 500 pages, but it is by no means dusty.

“Fundamentals of Law” is a series from Beck that advertises that it covers all areas of law while at the same time “gaining an eye on the essentials” and covering all exam-related material. The “Brox/Walker” books, which consist of the volumes BGB AT and Law of Obligations AT and BT, are probably the best known. Very few students don’t come across them at least once. So expectations were correspondingly high – can they live up to them?

optics

Like the books in the entire series, the softcover is very simple, but clearly identifiable as the Fundamentals of Law volume. There are obvious plus points for the fact that the textbook has held up well in my bag over many train trips and doesn’t seem particularly touchy, even if the edges of the cover aren’t particularly strong. The sides are tactilely fine. Thicker, thinner paper would be nice, but not necessary. It doesn’t feel like thermal paper, which makes it much better than many other textbooks.

The textbook also stays fairly simple on the inside. A well chosen focus is “bold” and titles and body text are very consistent. Only the schemes are framed in squares, which I personally like very much. Anyone who is bothered by lots of bold and italic highlighting with underlines, font changes, and playing with sizes will feel very comfortable with this book.

Structure and content

What I really like is that there is a 2-page table of contents followed by a 13-page table of contents. If you can find a topic template, the first one is ideal, for details, the table of contents will take you directly to the correct page and paragraph. As a result, there are no compromises when it comes to clarity.

Now it’s time to get to the heart of the matter: the content. First of all, it makes you happy because there isn’t a long “date” chapter in the beginning. The book gets straight to the point, i.e. the location and meaning of the common law of obligations. What is admirable about this is that he succeeds so well in distinguishing between the Law of Obligations and other civil law books. In the first 10 pages I already had a small aha effect, because the links are presented very clearly and simply.

The sentence structure is too simple for a legal textbook, so I rarely had to read a sentence twice. The individual sections, which are organized by chapter numbers, are usually rather short. Each sub-chapter begins, as far as I know so far, with a short, easy-to-remember status. This is then used as an example for all of the problems in this section, making it easier to “see” the problems and arguments and apply them to the case. On the other hand, this creates a good auxiliary memory.

Although I couldn’t work through the textbook in detail and only took it as an overview, it seemed very complete to me as a student. I was encouraged by the fact that I was able to complete each chapter relatively quickly. In addition, reading is less stressful due to the absence of substantial and linguistic flourishes.

Wishlist

What I also want is for it to be a guide for the schemas so I don’t have to scroll through it. Otherwise, the cases at the beginning of the chapter might have been a little original – maybe funny or a little weird – to stick a little better in memory.

And finally: if you like small drawings and pictures to better visualize the constellations, then you should either use pen and paper yourself, or look for another textbook. Although AT liabilities would be fine for short drawings, one searches in vain for them at Brox/Walker. But all of these points are pure questions of preference, so this is probably not a real criticism.

Great book if you have some basic knowledge

Brox/Walker will accompany me through the exam because I like the presentation, focus on the essentials without brevity, and the uniformity and clarity of the textbook. Although the 500 pages are quite a lot, the table of contents puts me in the right place very quickly when I need to look up something, and the language and structure make it quick to read and understand. Because of the many versions, Brox / Walker is also very modern, and it is also very informative and useful. It is also assumed that BGB AT and Law of Obligations BT will soon be allowed to move in with me.

However, in my opinion, it is much more useful to deal with the topic before reading it. If this is my first time dealing with the law of obligations, I will probably feel a little intimidated by the scope and often overwhelmed by the speed and basic knowledge required. However, this is just my personal impression. In any case, in my opinion, the textbook is well suited as supplementary material for the lecture and as preparation for the big exercise.

I’ve come to the conclusion that, as a very topical classic, Brox/Walker certainly lives up to high expectations. In the context of this review, there is a clear recommendation from the textbook for all those who deal with the general law of obligations or who have already dealt with it and want to refresh their knowledge.