Legal Current

When describing Black’s Law Dictionary, Bryan Garner refers to it simply as “the law dictionary of record.”

To him, that says it all. And it represents the amount of time and work that goes in to keeping Black’s in its respected position among scholars, judges, lawyers and law students.

“It is the most widely used legal dictionary in the world and it has been that since Henry Campbell Black wrote the first edition in 1891,” says Garner, the editor-in-chief of Black’s. “When I took it over in the 7th Edition we – a team of scholars and I – rewrote it and re-researched it. I’ve tried very hard over the 7th, 8th and now 9th Editions to deepen the scholarship and make it just as reliable a reference work as we can have.”

The new edition of Black’s, the 9th – published by West – contains more than 45,000 terms, including 2,500 new entries than the 8th. In addition to the new terms, more than 15,000 entries now cite the date when they were first used in English-language contexts, especially in judicial opinions.

Garner says the work to find new terms for Black’s is extensive and requires a lot of reading, by a lot of people.

“The way to acquire new terminology for any dictionary is to have a reading program and I have a small army of readers, volunteer readers, who help supply me with potential new terms for Black’s from books, judicial opinions, law review articles and more,” he says.

Garner, who operates LawProse in Dallas, enlists his team to help him research and write the definitions for the dictionary once he’s alerted to new terminology, as well as to review and edit the older terms.

Garner leans heavily on more than 200 legal scholars and legal professionals from around the world. (Find out more about that process in this Westcast audio podcast).

A would-be lawyer’s first link to all the hard work that goes into Black’s Law Dictionary begins in law school. Garner says “if you’re a law student and you’re trying to read a casebook or prepare to give an accurate answer in class or for an exam, you need to know precisely what a term means.”

He adds, “when you become a lawyer, if you’re making an argument in court, you want to be able to cite a reliable reference work. Black’s is the only dictionary ever to have been used as the exclusive basis for a U.S. Supreme Court opinion and Black’s is cited by the Supreme Court just about every term and by federal appellate courts and state supreme courts week in and week out.”

Garner says the 9th Edition meets his standard for honoring the legacy of Henry Campbell Black.

“He was a wonderful scholar and I’ve tried to carry on that tradition,” says Garner. “Black’s Law Dictionary is not merely a collection of what courts have said. It’s not a regurgitation of judicial definitions. We on the Black’s team view it as more of a primary source and we are as lexicographers giving it our best shot at defining the terms as well as possible to really bring it to a new level of scholarship with every edition.” (Watch a video interview with Garner).

Posted by Kevin Hunt in: Audio | In Practice | Practice tips | Share