1. A commendable feature of Goodrich's work is the commonalities he reveals between the common law and European civilian traditions.

2. Goodrich's use of this term is flavoured by a remark he quotes (at Reading the Law, p 98) of Ullmann, who took the paramount aim of the glossators to be that of: ‘explaining the Roman law from within itself in purely legalistic terms. Their work was an exegetical analysis.’

3. In fact, there is another element in the history of Western hermeneutics which ought also to be brought into Goodrich's picture: the contribution to biblical exegesis (and thence to canon law and medieval Roman law, and systems influenced by them) of rabbinic hermeneutics - which already by the late second century AD had classified the techniques of textual interpretation of the Bible (which is not to say that these were the techniques applied in practice). Goodrich's account of Western hermeneutics bases them on the assumptions ofcompleteness and consistency ofthe codes (Reading the law, p 99), but there is also another assumption, derived from the notion ofa canonical text, namely that nothing in the text is superfluous. Without this notion, I would suggest, it is impossible fully to appreciate the statement ofAccursius (discussed ibid) that no two statements in the Corpus Turis can be either contraria or similia.

4. In much of his work, Goodrich dichotomises the categories of ‘semiotics’ and ‘rhetoric’. However, in the preface to Legal Discourse he locates ‘critical semiotics’ on the side of the angels, along with socio-linguistics and discourse analysis.

5. Reading the Law, p 21.

6. Goodrich seems at times to approach a rather idealistic correlation of speech (as against writing) with democratic processes. See Reading the Law, pp 171-173. His account of rhetoric does not always distinguish the very different contexts in which rhetoric can operate, with consequential differences in its modes and effects: examples at Reading the Law, pp 170 and 181.

7. See especially the articles by Alida Wilson and Hillel Steiner in R.H.S. Tur and W.L. Twining (eds) Essuys on Kelsen (Oxford University Press, 1986).

8. Eg, the presentation of certain aspects of ancient law. It is, at best, hyperbole to describe the Old Testament as ‘the first comprehensive written law within the Western legal tradition’. Even if the Bible counts as ‘Western’ and the (earlier, and legally more extensive) Code ofHammurabi does not, it is hardly a ‘comprehensive’ account (there is virtually nothing on sale or property), and the mere fact that it is written merely raises the question whether such writing was used as is written law in modern times: it does not answer it. In fact, what (little) was written seems to have been used primarily for monumental purposes: social control operated by other means. Goodrich may, of course, reply that he is interested in the myth, not the historical reality, but the myth itself has a history, and Goodrich here presents a modern and anachronistic account of it. The account ofearly Roman law relies unduly on Maine. We read, for example, that ‘the early Western systems of law were systems ofreligious law and (that) no differentiation was made between the law and religion as institutions and practices’ (Reading the Law, p 94). It is by no means clear that the Twelve Tables ‘came from below in the sense that it was enacted so as to render disputed customary rules of law clearer’ (ibid, p 28; at p 95 it is claimed, without citation ofevidence, that these areas of law were politically contentious - by definition, perhaps?) or that ‘the Commission that drew up the XI 1 Tables based them in large measure upon the somewhat tyrannical law of Solon’ (ibid p 29; the historical tradition of the Commission to Greece is not accepted at face value by modern legal historians). The transition from unwritten to written law (ifthat, indeed, is what we have in either of these early societies) does not necessarily imply the displacement of an earlier customary system, with the political significance which Goodrich wishes to imply. By contrast, Goodrich's account of Justinian rests on firmer grounds, and properly emphasises the symbolic importance of the codification. For some different perspectives on the development ofwritten law in the ancient world, see B.S. Jackson, ‘From Dharma to Law, (1975) 22 American Journal ofcomparative Law 490-5 12.

9. Eg, his account of dictionary definitions and of literal meanings at Reading the Law, pp lOSff, where literal meaning seems to be taken as an attribute of individual words, independent of their context in sentences; or his discussion of the ‘mischief rule’ (ibid, pp 11 7, 123), which he seems to regard as a means ofcorrecting a doctrinal incoherence, rather than as a channel for the incorporation of legislative policy; his discussion of probability and proof (Reading the Law, pp 17%181), in the light ofTwining's argument that probabilities fit within the traditional (‘optimistic rationalism’) paradigm of proof.

10. Lcgal Discourse, pp 39f.

11. See especially the essays on Law and Logic in H. Kelsen, Essays in Legal and Moral Philosoghj (ed 0. Weinberger, Dordrecht, D. Reidel, 1973); and B.S. Jackson, ‘Kelsen between Formalism and Realism, [ 1985 ] VII( 1) The Liverpool Law Review 79-93; idem, Semiotics andhgal Theoy (London, Routledge & Kegal Paul, 1985) ch 10.

12. Legal Discourse, p 23.

13. The differences are discussed at some length in my Semiotics and Legal Theory, supra,

14. Supra, n 8.

15. This now-common practice, it may be noted, is no longerjustifiable in terms of cost, given the availability of appropriate page make-up software. Academic authors ought not to tolerate endnotes (even chapter endnotes) any further.

16. At Reading the Law, p 150, ‘mathematically precise formulations’