Preface to the second edition

• Author: Christopher Nicholls
• Pages: 19-21

xix

PREFACE

to the Second Edition

The bearded fellow at the front of the classroom that morning had

been invited by our professor to deliver a guest lecture. (Inviting a

“guest lecturer,” as I would discover years later, is perhaps the most

artful form of shirki ng known to the university teacher.)

When this gentleman wa sn’t waiting tables at the local Mother

Tucker’s, he apparently directed stage plays for a livi ng. He was a fount

of practical wisdom. “The purpose of t he first rehearsal,” I heard him

declaim above the chorus of yawns, “is simply to get the company to

the second rehearsal.”

The meaning of this cur ious comment was quite lost on me in that

lecture hall several dec ades ago. But I now understand the sentiment

perfectly. And so I have come to believe that the purpose of a first edi-

tion of a law book is chiefly to get one to the second edition.

I have often read prefaces to second editions of legal texts in which

the authors have haughtily explained that their “thi nking has evolved”

since the first edition. This i ncomparable expression appears to mean

no more than this: th at the author has spotted all t he howling errors he

made the first time a round. It is easier on the ego, of course, to insist

that one has climbed to a h igher intellectual plateau th an to admit that

one has turned up a pile of embar rassing mistakes. Admitt ing mistakes

seems to suggest that one is not infallible, which is bad, or that one is

prone to change one’s mind, which is worse. Openly changing one’s

mind, observation sugge sts, is altogether to be avoided if one is running

for public office or writing a second edition. For my part, however, I am