Book Review

Abstract

Jim West would have been immensely pleased with virtually all major aspects of Recent Transformations in Korean Law and Society save one; namely, the volume's dedication to him. The late Dr. West was an extraordinary, brilliant and deeply caring human being, blending together seemingly disparate interests and attributes in a truly sui generis manner in this all too homogenized world of ours. Consider how this high school footballer wrote his doctoral dissertation at the Harvard Law School on Habermas and Luhmann. Or how this ardent champion of human rights excelled in corporate legal practice. Or how this bear of a man looking like something out of Dostoevsky combined a near congenital shyness with abiding passions and a ferocious intellectual intensity that made him a stunning teacher. But throughout it all, Jim was, if anything, as genuinely humble a person as one might hope to meet, modest about all except the search for justice and the importance of integrity, particularly in intellectual endeavor.