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International Construction Law Review

BOOK REVIEW - CONSTRUCTION LAW

professor doug s jones ao

Construction Law, 2nd Edition. By Julian Bailey. Informa Law from 
Routledge, 2016. LCCN: 2016018699. ISBN: 978-1-138-80042-7 (hbk). ISBN: 978-1-315-75546-5 (ebk) available on www.i-law.com. 3 Volumes. 3,670 pp (also available as an e-book) £465.
I have often rejoiced in the fact that the construction industry is one that is, in my view, remarkably unique amongst professional cohorts. The friendly collegiality between practitioners in our free-sharing of ideas and personal intellectual property makes the community one in which knowledge is fostered, legal acumen is tested, and jurisprudence the world over is developed increasingly swiftly. In this context, one could say the international construction industry is a classic ‘chicken or the egg’ conundrum. Is our willingness to share the secrets of our trade with each other a response to the dynamic nature of the industry, or does our practice of such in fact propel the industry to be as dynamic as it is?
Semantics aside, it is the endless cycle of infrastructure investment that shapes the industry and gives rise to the mass of risks and issues within it. Faced with these complexities, when our colleagues publish manuals that collate and present the law in our field, we collectively celebrate their achievement.
Five years ago, Julian Bailey delivered unto the international construction law community an instructional companion of mammoth proportions, one appropriately described by Lord Justice Jackson as a “tour de force” and accurately predicted to become “the standard work of reference for busy practitioners across England, Wales and Australia”. Rising from the humble beginnings of a dedicated lawyer’s “set of notes on construction law”, there is no doubt that the first edition of Construction Law is an epitome of comparative analyses of English and Australian construction law. Yet Bailey has now delivered a successive companion to international construction lawyers, this time of even more compendious and thorough terms.
The second edition of Construction Law brings with it the substantial expansion of legal analyses to include jurisdictional coverage of the rich construction industries in Hong Kong and Singapore. Practitioners will appreciate from experience the alacrity with which the construction industry and accompanying law has developed in these countries. Bailey has assembled these developments into one publication, and highlights the significance of the jurisprudence arising from their courts to other courts that share their common law heritage.
Like the first edition, the objective of the second edition of Construction Law remains the same; to create a general textbook of practical use to persons interested in construction law issues. Bailey has achieved this

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