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Indiana University Studies 
D. Law Dictionaries. 
There is a long line of English Law Dictionaries beginning in 1538 
with Rastell’s Expositiones Terminorum Legum Anglorum and ending 
for the present with Byrne’s Dictionary of English Law in 1923. Amer- 
ican dictionaries commence with Bouvier’s Law Dictionary in 1839, and 
the latest first edition is Pope’s Legal Definitions, Words Defined by 
the Courts, 1920. It is important to observe that many of these works 
do not purport to give the usually accepted meanings of words or of 
phrases, but merely collect definitions which the courts or legislatures 
have made, and such definitions must be read in the light of the context. 
They can never be relied upon as determining the general legal meaning 
of a word or term. Important modern dictionaries are: 
1. American. 
a. Bouvier, Law Dictionary and Concise Encyclopedia (Rawle’s 
Third Edition), 1914. 
b. Ballentine, Law Dictionary, 1923 ed. 
c. Judicial and Statutory Definitions of Words and Phrases, com- 
monly known as Words and Phrases (1st series in 8 
volumes, 1905; 2d series in 4 volumes, 1914). 
2. English. 
a. Byrne, Dictionary of English Law. 
b. Mozley and Whitely, Law Dictionary (1923 ed.). 
c. Stroud, Judicial Dictionary of Words and Phrases Judicially 
Interpreted (ed. 1903-1909 in 4 volumes). 
3. Australia. 
Bedwell, Australasian Judicial Dictionary, 1920. 
4. Canada. 
Widdefield, Words and Phrases Judicially defined, 1914. 
5. South Africa. 
Bell, South African Legal Dictionary, 1910. 
E. Legal Periodicals. 
“For ten and twenty years past”, says Professor John H. Wigmore, 
“there have been at the service of the profession more than a dozen 
legal periodicals, publishing the weightiest critiques of current legal 
problems.” 112 And besides this number there have been many more, 
some of them of doubtful value, and others practically worthless as con- 
tributions to legal learning or scholarship. In the use of law magazines 
the same painstaking discrimination is necessary as in the use of 
treatises and of articles in legal encyclopedias. The standing of the 
publication, the learning and ability of the writer, the authenticity of 
his data, the inherent reasonableness of his deductions in the light of 
legal history, existing social conditions and the known truths of all 
sciences affecting human conduct, — all these must be carefully weighed 
in attempting to place the proper value upon legal periodical literature. 
A brief history of legal periodicals and a list of them, British and 
American, will be found in Hicks, Materials and Methods of Legal 
112 Wigmore, Evidence (2d ed., 1923), 115. 
