The Default Library
Paths / Path 33

Law

What law is for, how lawyers reason, and how the world's legal families answer the same human questions differently.

For: anyone starting a law degree anywhere, anyone who has signed a contract or a lease, anyone who wants to understand the news about courts.

Shaped by the first-year US JD core (Contracts, Torts, Property, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Legal Writing), the five-year law degrees of Spain, Mexico, Argentina and Chile, Germany's state-exam subjects, and Oxford's Jurisprudence. Descriptive, not legal advice.

17readings
3.7 hoursof reading
4stages
16 reads · 1 deep dive
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Stage 1

Year 1 · The common ground

5 readings · 1.1 hours
  1. 01ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Legal Systems of the World: Same Human Problems, Different Answers

    Common law, civil law, religious and customary law: where rules come from.
  2. 02ReadInteractiveQuiz11 min

    Legal Reasoning & Writing: From a Rule and Some Facts to an Answer

    How lawyers read a case or a code and build an argument.
  3. 03ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Contracts & Obligations: What Makes a Promise Bind

    Promises the law will enforce, and what happens when they're broken.
  4. 04ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Torts & Civil Liability: Who Pays When Someone Is Hurt

    Who pays when someone is hurt.
  5. 05ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Criminal Law & Procedure: Guilt, Proof and Who Runs the Trial

    Crime, guilt and fair trials, adversarial and inquisitorial.
Stage 2

Year 2 · The state and the self

4 readings · 51 min
  1. 06ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Constitutional Law: The Rules for the People Who Make the Rules

    Constitutions, rights and the courts that guard them.
  2. 07ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Property: Who Gets to Say No

    What it means to own something.
  3. 08ReadInteractiveQuiz11 min

    Civil Procedure & Evidence: How a Dispute Becomes a Case, and What Counts as Proof

    How a dispute becomes a trial, and what counts as proof.
  4. 09ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Political Theory: Justice, Power, Legitimacy and Liberty

    Justice, legitimacy and why law binds at all.
Stage 3

Year 3 · Beyond the courtroom

4 readings · 53 min
  1. 10ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Administrative Law: How Government Is Held to the Law

    How governments are held to the law.
  2. 11ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    International Law & Human Rights: Rules Between Nations Without a World Police

    Treaties, human rights courts and law between nations.
  3. 12ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    European Union Law: The Deepest Legal Union, and Its Rivals

    The world's deepest legal union, and its rivals in Latin America and Africa.
  4. 13Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min

    Business Law & Ethics: Who Is Allowed to Do What, and Who Pays When It Goes Wrong

    Companies, contracts and ethics in business.
Stage 4

Year 4 · Law in the world

4 readings · 52 min
  1. 14ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Microeconomics: Why Nothing Is Free and Every Price Is a Message

    Law and economics starts with incentives.
  2. 15ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Game Theory: When Your Best Move Depends on Mine

    Settlement, bargaining and strategy.
  3. 16ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Cognitive Psychology: A Narrow Beam and a Rebuilding Crew

    Why eyewitness memory fails.
  4. 17ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Public Policy: How Problems Become Policies, and What Then Goes Wrong

    How laws become policy and policy becomes law.
When you finish

Glanville Williams, Learning the Law; John Henry Merryman and Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo, The Civil Law Tradition; the textbooks named at the end of each subject.

Next path →

Political Science

Who gets what, when and how: power, institutions, elections, war and peace, studied with evidence.