On the evidence of this first issue of European Law Reports, “EuLR” looks set to join the profusion of cryptic legal citations which tax our reference skills: AllER(EC), WLR, CEC et al. With European Court of Justice case law steadily impacting on the domestic scene (“some 4,000 judgments”) many more important cases will be decided in national courts and tribunals rather than in the Hague: “subsidiarity in action” (Editorial). European Law Reports aims to bring together the most important decisions from the courts and tribunals of England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Eire, which deal with issues of European Community law in order that they may be more readily available to those interested in this area of law. The editor claims that judgments in such cases “are insufficiently, belatedly or merely not reported” and thus “a crucial body of Community law remains unknown to many who need to know of it”.
In this first bi‐monthly issue, eight cases are reported, three on competition and one each on licensing, consumer protection, planning application, excise duty and free movement of goods. Five come from divisions of the (English) High Court of Justice, one from the Court of Appeal, one from the High Court of Ireland, and one from the Value Added Tax and Duties Tribunal. The blurb tells us that the second issue has cases on unfair dismissal, restraint of trade (anti‐doping tests carried out on tennis players) and patents. The reports follow the standard style for law reports: headnotes, “Facts” (i.e. summary of case), “Held” (the judgment), legislation cited, cases referred to, and the judges’ summing up. The latter are particularly full, 19 pages in one case.
A check found no overlap with the All England Reports (including the European Cases volumes), Weekly Law Reports, CCH’s European Community Cases, the Law Reports Index and The Digest. If this “complementarity” continues, EuLR will form a useful body of law for which librarians of legal and social studies collections will have to find funds.
