5 ms·

You could try reading a torts book. Since nobody but lawyers ever wants to do what you describe, the only books that get written are for law students and profes

You could try reading a torts book. Since nobody but lawyers ever wants to do what you describe, the only books that get written are for law students and professionals. Learning it halfway isn't actually very useful. No-one wants to hear outsider perspectives on cases, they are pretty much never good, so nobody wants to create a hive of lay-yers ready to go spreading their terrible takes by giving them a book of handy hints. Case in point: most HN legal discussions. Call me elitist but truly we are blessed that more people don't try their hand. A big problem is that your natural tendency to gloss over details has to be beaten out of you, mercilessly, before anyone will trust you to make an argumentative summary. You won't make much progress with the attitude that you can just learn general principles and be slightly better at reading; you have to get comfortable diving right down to details and coming up for air later. Torts books are good because they start with the creation of torts and build, they don't have to assume too much knowledge. And the judges are often unbound by technicalities for the same reason. Hence 1L students can read them. You'll get a great impression of what it means for judges to create law. Downside: there are no new important torts cases popping up that you'd want to read.

mlevental 7y ago
my goal is simply to be better able to navigate the legal system, rather than to pontificate. >You won't make much progress with the attitude that you can just learn general principles and be slightly better at reading; you have to get comfortable diving right down to details and coming up for air later. it's a little presumptuous of you to imagine that 1 i intend to be so cavalier 2 that i don't already know how to be detail oriented. fwiw i took the lsat and scored 97% - while not exactly translatable to writing a summary brief i think i'm quite capable of diving into the details (if we're to believe lsac). >Torts books are good because they start with the creation of torts and build, they don't have to assume too much knowledge. suggestion for a good one? should i also get the e&e?
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  > it's a little presumptuous of you to imagine that 1 i intend to be so cavalier Considering you ask for a book for a "lay person" on "rigorous law", I don't think that was presumptuous at all. cormacrelf's point is that there is no such thing. If it's written for a layperson, it can't be rigorous; conversely, if it's rigorous it requires more than a lay understanding of law. Asking for such a thing indicates an unfamiliarity with the depths that constitute rigor in the legal profession.
  - mlevental 7y ago
    >Considering you ask for a book for a "lay person" on "rigorous law", I don't think that was presumptuous at all. cormacrelf's point is that there is no such thing i laid out exactly what i thought was presumptuous 1. that i'm cavalier 2. that i'm not comfortable with detail oriented analysis. >"lay person" on "rigorous law" there is no mention of rigor in cormacrelf's post. rigor and detail are not synonymous. >If it's written for a layperson, it can't be rigorous is this a feature of "the law"? i can point to many rigorous math books that do not require a specialists understanding of the math (read: they introduce all the necessary ideas).
    - cormacrelf 7y ago
      I was trying to get across why such books don’t exist, and why it might take more effort than you might think. The reason those math books exist is that people who understand the Riemann Hypothesis halfway are not a huge danger to themselves and others. If you wrote a law book designed for lay folk, it would fly off the shelves into the hands of people who become self-represented litigants who would then screw up their lives and give bad advice to their friends. Half-baked legal ideas about what you are or are not allowed to do also get relied upon in practice, with disastrous results. Whatever “navigate the legal system” means to you, that’s what it means to everyone else. Of course, there are thousands of mostly government publications out there that do a great job explaining what your rights are in different situations. I don’t have a problem with these, because they don’t give anyone the power to read a case and think they know what it means for them. When it comes to “introduc[ing] all the necessary ideas”, I was also making the point with torts books that the ideas are not able to be easily isolated from just learning the law. I would also argue that there is no such thing as “rigorous law” in the sense that it implies some law that is not rigorous that could still be usefully practiced. Hand-wavy explanations in math are pedagogical; hand-wavy arguments in law are either unsupported or appeals to bigger or competing principles, of which the latter is absolutely still “rigorous law” and has to acknowledge the omitted details anyway. If you don’t have the depth of knowledge, you end up in the former category pretty quickly. If you wanted an academic perspective with normative arguments about what the law should be, then sure, but that’s not “navigating the legal system”. (Also, I can’t recommend a torts book. Wrong jurisdiction probably.)
walterbell 7y ago
> Downside: there are no new important torts cases popping up that you'd want to read. Why is that? e.g. how long ago were the important torts cases, did the law or environment change?
- cormacrelf 7y ago
  Well, it’s more that the clarifications you get now are not ground-shaking. Many torts have been around for hundreds of years now, so they’re pretty settled. Negligence was 1932, so every now and then someone finds a new duty of care. I guess defamation still gets some airtime in some jurisdictions.

mlevental 7y ago

my goal is simply to be better able to navigate the legal system, rather than to pontificate. >You won't make much progress with the attitude that you can just learn general principles and be slightly better at reading; you have to get comfortable diving right down to details and coming up for air later. it's a little presumptuous of you to imagine that 1 i intend to be so cavalier 2 that i don't already know how to be detail oriented. fwiw i took the lsat and scored 97% - while not exactly translatable to writing a summary brief i think i'm quite capable of diving into the details (if we're to believe lsac). >Torts books are good because they start with the creation of torts and build, they don't have to assume too much knowledge. suggestion for a good one? should i also get the e&e?

vonmoltke 7y ago
> it's a little presumptuous of you to imagine that 1 i intend to be so cavalier Considering you ask for a book for a "lay person" on "rigorous law", I don't think that was presumptuous at all. cormacrelf's point is that there is no such thing. If it's written for a layperson, it can't be rigorous; conversely, if it's rigorous it requires more than a lay understanding of law. Asking for such a thing indicates an unfamiliarity with the depths that constitute rigor in the legal profession.
- mlevental 7y ago
  >Considering you ask for a book for a "lay person" on "rigorous law", I don't think that was presumptuous at all. cormacrelf's point is that there is no such thing i laid out exactly what i thought was presumptuous 1. that i'm cavalier 2. that i'm not comfortable with detail oriented analysis. >"lay person" on "rigorous law" there is no mention of rigor in cormacrelf's post. rigor and detail are not synonymous. >If it's written for a layperson, it can't be rigorous is this a feature of "the law"? i can point to many rigorous math books that do not require a specialists understanding of the math (read: they introduce all the necessary ideas).
  - cormacrelf 7y ago
    I was trying to get across why such books don’t exist, and why it might take more effort than you might think. The reason those math books exist is that people who understand the Riemann Hypothesis halfway are not a huge danger to themselves and others. If you wrote a law book designed for lay folk, it would fly off the shelves into the hands of people who become self-represented litigants who would then screw up their lives and give bad advice to their friends. Half-baked legal ideas about what you are or are not allowed to do also get relied upon in practice, with disastrous results. Whatever “navigate the legal system” means to you, that’s what it means to everyone else. Of course, there are thousands of mostly government publications out there that do a great job explaining what your rights are in different situations. I don’t have a problem with these, because they don’t give anyone the power to read a case and think they know what it means for them. When it comes to “introduc[ing] all the necessary ideas”, I was also making the point with torts books that the ideas are not able to be easily isolated from just learning the law. I would also argue that there is no such thing as “rigorous law” in the sense that it implies some law that is not rigorous that could still be usefully practiced. Hand-wavy explanations in math are pedagogical; hand-wavy arguments in law are either unsupported or appeals to bigger or competing principles, of which the latter is absolutely still “rigorous law” and has to acknowledge the omitted details anyway. If you don’t have the depth of knowledge, you end up in the former category pretty quickly. If you wanted an academic perspective with normative arguments about what the law should be, then sure, but that’s not “navigating the legal system”. (Also, I can’t recommend a torts book. Wrong jurisdiction probably.)

walterbell 7y ago

> Downside: there are no new important torts cases popping up that you'd want to read. Why is that? e.g. how long ago were the important torts cases, did the law or environment change?

cormacrelf 7y ago
Well, it’s more that the clarifications you get now are not ground-shaking. Many torts have been around for hundreds of years now, so they’re pretty settled. Negligence was 1932, so every now and then someone finds a new duty of care. I guess defamation still gets some airtime in some jurisdictions.