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Uncovering the Secrets of the Common Law

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Kim Lane Scheppele. Legal Secrets: Equality and Efficiency in the Common Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. xiii + 363 pp. Appendix, references, table of cases, name and subject indexes. $54.00 (cloth); $17.95 (paper).

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Michael J. Saks
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Extract

“Legal secrets” are secrets that the law of torts or contracts either require to be—or protect from being—divulged. The secrets themselves are without limit: a professor's past as a former priest, things learned while in a previous job, that a house has running water only twelve hours each day, that land was worth more than its owner realized, that a patient told his psychotherapist that he planned to kill his girlfriend, that the Treaty of Ghent was signed ending the War of 1812, and on and on. The legal flags under which these battles for the control of secret information are fought reduce to the law of fraud, privacy, trade secrets, and implied warranties. And the underlying economic or other principles that are proposed to explain the decisions in these areas of law are even fewer.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 24 , Issue 5 , 1990 , pp. 1277 - 1293
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 The Law and Society Association.

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References

References

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Cases Cited

Barber v. Time, 159 S.W.2d 291 (1942).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Briscoe v. Reader's Digest, 483 P.2d 34 (1971).Google Scholar
Laidlaw v. Organ, 15 U.S. (2 Wheat.) 178 (1817).Google Scholar
Melvin v. Reid, 297 P. 91 (1931).Google Scholar
Virgil v. Time, 527 F.2d 1122 (1975).Google Scholar
Wheeler v. P. Sorenson Mfg. Co., 415 S.W.2d 582 (Ky. 1967).Google Scholar