Best law practice reference books according to redditors
We found 110 Reddit comments discussing the best law practice reference books. We ranked the 36 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 110 Reddit comments discussing the best law practice reference books. We ranked the 36 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
> Depends on the system of citation. See, e.g., The Bluebook.
FTFY
Depends on the system of citation. See The Bluebook.
See, for example, e.g., The Bluebook, for instance.
I was reading a book called "What About Law" and one of the chapters mentioned this, including it being used in a case about a women who was robbed of a ring given to her by her mother (who was given it by her mother). It's a great book even if you're not particularly interested in law, and is very accessible. Each chapter focuses on a case e.g. Criminal law focused on the importance of intent - for example, a boy set out to murder a girl, and believed he could do so by making a voodoo doll of her and pushing pins inside of the doll. Obviously, it did not actually kill her, but there was clear intent - but is that enough to convinct him (spoiler - it was!). Great read.
Ok, this is gonna be long, but it'll be worth it.
I live in California, I'm a gun owner, and I've done extensive research on the topics touched on in this thread.
First off, I urge you to buy a copy of this book, as it will provide most of the answers you will be looking for.
Here we go. To answer your main question, it is a "wobbler" (a crime that can be charged as either a misdemeanor or felony) in California to import, assemble, sell, offer for sale or transfer, or otherwise transfer an assembled magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds to anyone not a Sworn Peace officer, licenses armed guard, or firearms dealer with a specific license issued by CA DOJ.
What does this mean? This means that any pistol you buy (legally) is going to come with magazines that are designed to hold 10 rounds (most reputable manufacturers make dedicated 10 round capacity mags for current manufacture pistols). Pistols that came with >10 rounds and were not manufactured after ~1994 you are going to get an aftermarket magazine, or in some rare cases a magazine that has been pinned or otherwise permanently altered to only hold 10 rounds or less.
If you possessed (in California) magazines with a >10 round capacity prior to January 1, 2000 it is perfectly legal for you to possess, carry and use those magazines. It is also perfectly legal for you to loan them (short term, vague legal wording, I take it to mean like in your presence) to anyone else who may legally possess a firearm.
It is also legal for you to order and possess repair parts for your legally possessed >10 round magazines, including complete "repair kits" consisting of all parts for a magazine, as long as you do not assemble them into new magazines.
Now this is just hypothetical, but if you were to assemble one of those repair kits into a new magazine with a >10 round capacity, the State must prove that you did so within the last 3 years. The statute of limitations for manufacture, import, sale, or transfer of a >10 round capacity magazine is 3 years from the date of the crime. As I mentioned earlier, it is a "wobbler", so you could be charged with either a felony or a misdemeanor, mostly depending on the local DA.
There is also speculation that it is legal to buy a >10 round magazine, as the relevant law (PC 12020(a)(2), I know it's PC12020, but I'm not certain about the section) does not specifically prohibit purchase, but to my knowledge no one has ever tried that defense in court.
Handguns that are not on the safe handgun roster cannot be sold by an FFL, with one exception: a Single Shot Transfer (SST). If you can find an FFL willing to do a SST for that firearm, you can buy pretty much anything, assuming it can be altered to be single shot. An SST is where the dealer alters the firearm to a single shot configuration before transferring the firearm to you (this generally means they swap the barrel with something that is long enough to meet the SST length requirement, and a "zero capacity" magazine (one that will not accept cartridges). Once you legally own the firearm it is perfectly legal for you to put the pistol back into its factory configuration, or to have the FFL do so on your behalf (they usually will sell you the conversion parts with the gun and then offer to buy them back for the same price).
Also handguns not on the roster can be legally purchased from a private party, or can be gifted to you by a parent or child living out of state (assuming the child is 21+).
The gun laws here suck, but they're generally not as bad as people (including FFL's, don't assume that they know anything about the law just because they can sell guns) make them out to be.
If you want those laws changed, vote for candidates that will do so, and donate to the CalGuns Foundation and the Second Amendment Foundation. Those organizations are actively working to make our shitty gun laws better.
Edit:
The handgun roster requires 3 guns of each model and 1200 rounds for each gun to be submitted by the manufacturer of testing to an approved California Handgun Safety Test Center, along with a $600 fee per gun. If any of the three guns fails any part of the test the manufacturer must resubmit all three guns, and another 1200 rounds and $600 per gun to have them retested. After certification, the manufacturer must pay $200 per year for each model to maintain the certification. It's a huge and arbitrary mess. Many manufacturers just don't find it worth getting a model that does not sell like hot cakes certified. Also to be added to the list after 2006, all models must have a loaded chamber indicator and a magazine safety disconnect. Models on the list prior to 2006 are exempt as long as the manufacturer pays the
extortionmaintenance fee every year.George Orwell: 1984. Essential to understanding the Totalitarian Left, and ideas that have now entered our language and are becoming more relevant by the day, such as doublethink, thoughtcrime, and newspeak.
Donald J. Boudreaux: The Essential Hayek. (also Hayek's original works, eg The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty, but they are much more expensive. This is a good introduction to the Austrian School of economics).
Carroll Quigley: Tragedy & Hope: a history of the world in our time.
http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Tragedy_and_Hope.pdf
> One of these persistent questions is typical of the twentieth century rather than of earlier times: Can our way of life survive? Is our civilization doomed to vanish, as did that of the Incas, the Sumerians, and the Romans? From Giovanni Battista Vico in the early eighteenth century to Oswald Spengler in the early twentieth century and Arnold J Toynbee in our own day, men have been puzzling over the problem of whether civilizations have a life cycle and follow a similar pattern of change. from this discussion emerged a fairly general agreement that men live in separately organized societies, each with its own distinct culture; that some of these societies, having writing and city life, exist on a higher level of culture than the rest, and should be called by the different term "civilizations"; and that these civilizations tend to pass through a common pattern of experience.
Carroll Quigley: The Evolution of Civilizations. http://www.archive.org/stream/CarrollQuigley-TheEvolutionOfCivilizations-AnIntroductionTo/CarrollQuigley-TheEvolutionOfCivilizations-AnIntroductionToHistoricalAnalysis1979#page/n1/mode/2up
> In this perceptive look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilizations, Professor Quigley seeks to establish the analytical tools necessary for understanding history. He examines the application of scientific method to the social sciences, then establishes his historical hypotheses. He poses a division of culture into six levels, from the more abstract to the more concrete—intellectual, religious, social, political, economic, and military—and he identifies seven stages of historical change for all civilizations: mixture, gestation, expansion, conflict, universal empire, decay, and invasion.
J.C. Unwin: Sex and Culture
https://archive.org/details/b20442580
> With care-free open-mindedness I decided to test, by a reference to human records, a somewhat startling conjecture that had been made by analytical psychologists. This suggestion was that if the social regulations forbid direct satisfaction of the sexual impulses the emotional conflict is expressed in another way, and that what we call 'civilization' has always been built up by compulsory sacrifices in the gratification of innate desires.
Sir John Glubb: The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival. http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
> d) The stages of the rise and fall of great nations seem to be:
>The Age of Pioneers (outburst)
> The Age of Conquests
>The Age of Commerce
>The Age of Affluence
>The Age of Intellect
>The Age of Decadence.
>(e) Decadence is marked by:
>Defensiveness
>Pessimism
>Materialism
>Frivolity
>An influx of foreigners
>The Welfare State
>A weakening of religion.
>(f) Decadence is due to:
>Too long a period of wealth and power
>Selfishness
>Love of money
>The loss of a sense of duty.
>(g) The life histories of great states are amazingly similar, and are due to internal factors.
E. Belfort Bax: The Fraud of Feminism. http://www.angryharry.com/FraudOfFeminism.htm (written in 1913, it clearly shows that there was no 'golden age' of feminism, and that feminists can never be satisfied).
> Though women have been conceded all the rights of men, their privileges as females have remained untouched, while the sentimental "pull" they have over men, and the favouritism shown them in the courts, civil and criminal, often in flagrant violation of elementary justice, continues as before. The result of their position on juries, as evinced in certain trials, has rather confirmed the remarks made in Chapter II. anent [concerning] hysteria than otherwise. The sex-bias of men in favour of women and the love of the advanced woman towards her sex-self show no sign of abatement.
And two recent important works in political philosophy that are therefore not available for free.
John Rawls. A Theory of Justice. A seminal book providing an alternative to Utilitarianism. "Rawls's "Theory of Justice" is widely and justly regarded as this century's most important work of political philosophy. "
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0674000781/
T.M. Scanlon. What We Owe to Each Other. Following on from Rawls' insights, and applying them more broadly than only to justice, to what underpins a society working together. "What do we owe to each other? What obligations of honesty, respect, trust and consideration exist between people?"
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/067400423X/
Finally
Jonathan Haidt: Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Haidt shows that there are at least 6 foundations of what people see as social good. Of these, the Left see 'Caring' as the good, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Libertarians see 'Liberty' as the good, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Conservatives are fairly evenly balanced across the 6, and have the easiest time understanding the perspective of the others as a result. See also http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0042366 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONUM4akzLGE. You might know Haidt from this talk: http://www.sciencevsfeminism.com/the-myth-of-equality/jonathan-haidt-coddling-u-strengthening-u/
Read all of Bryan Garner's books. They are worth it.
For starters, I would begin with Legal Writing in Plain English.
If you want to torture yourself voluntarily before the actual work begins, which is a really dumb idea, go on Amazon.com and buy the Dressler and Freer supplements and read away. You don't need to pay some assholes $1,295 to tell you a bunch of stuff you won't be able to remember by the time final exams roll around in December.
But if you really are determined to torture yourself, I'll give you what you need for free. Here is their curriculum.
First, case briefing. Just buy this book. It has six cases, and model briefs at the end. It's not a hard concept.
Second, time management. Follow the syllabus. Read supplements as well if you like.
Third, outlining. Do what works for you. No one can tell you what will work for you. Use the outline bank on this website if you want to see examples.
Fourth, surviving the Socratic method. There is nothing to survive. You go to lectures. Professors talk. Overconfident kids blurt out wrong answers. Professors slowly explain why they are wrong. Don't be the overconfident kid blurting out wrong answers.
Fifth, note-taking and studying. Same as outlining.
Sixth, thinking like a professor. This is an obtuse way of saying exam writing. Read this book and this book. Then make sure to do a lot of practice exams before the real exam, and review model answers to those exams.
So about $60 on Amazon is a better deal than $1300 to these guys.
Read Don Mitchell if this topic interests you at all. He has great stuff on speech, privacy, and shrinking public places. I find it fascinating. Basically, new jurisprudence is increasingly expanding the "right to be left alone." At the same time, traditional public spaces are disappearing (parks are privatized or replaced by malls).
That's how an employer can make their employees picket miles away from the entrance to the premises, even though that dramatically changes the effectiveness and content (no more "scabs crossing picket lines") of the speech.
The S.U.V. model of citizenship: floating bubbles, buffer zones, and the rise of the “purely atomic” individual
The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space
The Annihilation of Space by Law: The Roots and Implications of Anti-Homeless Laws in the United States
Sorry, I've been hammering away at a journal article. I'm tempted to write a long-ass post but . . . . Hopefully you read this all but if not add me as a friend and shoot me messages as shit goes down.
Books: Top two recommendations (off the top of my head)
General Tips: (also off the top of my head)
Edit Forgot to mention. Law school is about 40% confidence, 50% hard work, and 10% keeping it cool (but really hard work)
For political science, I liked "Why Nations Fail". For political theory, the 1-2 punch of "A Theory of Justice" and "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" is obligatory. If you ever just want to cry, there's "A Problem from Hell."
The political problem I'm most interested in is how to conduct votes. www.equal.vote has some really good information about how different voting systems work and how the voting systems used in all developed democracies are not optimal. Best of luck.
I cannot over-recommend Bryan Garner's Legal Writing in Plain English. He has been the editor of the Black's Law Dictionary for the past few editions, and his legal writing style is simple and effective.
>Could you elaborate on how a social contract makes following laws an ethical matter?
Not on Reddit, I don't have anywhere near that kind of time.
http://smile.amazon.com/Locke-Treatises-Government-Cambridge-Political/dp/0521357306
http://smile.amazon.com/Social-Contract-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486426920
http://smile.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/0674000781
These three books are a great place to start. Consider me your intro to political philosophy professor.
You've not been here long I take it. Andrew Romanoff was the youngest Speaker of the House in our history. He was term limited & he is well liked and respected.
Take some time to get to know him, he's more qualified for the position than everyone else combined. He earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University, took time off from Yale to work at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where he researched the Ku Klux Klan. He also worked at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and taught English in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. During his time in Nicaragua, his political philosophy was shaped by reading A Theory of Justice by liberal philosopher John Rawls.
Then he earned a Master's degree in public policy from John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Prior to earning a law degree from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Romanoff worked for Democratic Congressman David Skaggs.
Zacks - An Underground Education : The Unauthorized and Outrageous Supplement to Everything You Thought You Knew About Art, Sex, Business, Crime, Science, Medicine, and Other Fields of Human Knowledge
Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bastiat - The Law
I did the Kaplan prep course and it was really helpful when I went into the LSAT. Recommended. You can probably get an old one cheap.
I also really recommend the book "Getting to Maybe," which will give you a really good idea of what law school is going to be like, particularly law school exams.
My school has a repository at our library for old exams - both the questions and what the professor considered a "good exam." Maybe yours does as well? Worth reading if so.
It is absolutely not a knowledge dump. The rule of thumb you'll hear a lot is some variation of IRACC (issue, rule, analysis, counter argument, conclusion). You're looking for the gaps. You're looking to apply the knowledge you learned.
You may want to read Getting to Maybe.
Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams
(https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Maybe-Excel-School-Exams/dp/0890897603/)
Worth it just for the exam formatting advice.
They are not supposed to read like memoirs in that it shouldn't be a complete history of your life, but it's okay to use anecdotes to tell your story. In fact, I'd recommend it.
There's a great book called 55 Successful Harvard Law School Application Essays (http://www.amazon.com/Successful-Harvard-School-Application-Essays/dp/0312366116). I highly recommend that you read a good bunch of them to get a feel for what a good personal statement sounds like. When you read them, try to criticize the essay before reading the criticisms presented on the next page. In my opinion, the given criticisms are often spot-on. Test yourself to pick out what's good and bad about the essays until your intuition is good.
When you write your own, here's what I recommend
source: Editing personal statements is a big part of my job.
Someone recommended this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Legal-Writing-English-Second-Edition/dp/0226283933?ie=UTF8&dpID=51oLwBvwzJL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR113%2C160_
It's on my xmas list
The Bluebook is basically the U.S. legal citation bible. You won't find a U.S.-trained lawyer who isn't familiar with it, though proficiency will vary substantially. Fair warning, it's not really user friendly if you don't have some legal training or a general understanding of citation structure, but you can pick that up.
It's like a writing style manual, but exclusively for building legal citations. Blue pages are mostly for memoranda and briefs, white pages have more material you'll expect to use for professional articles / law review work.
Cool. If you want some unsolicited law school advice, I highly recommend that you read Getting to Maybe for advice on how to write a decent law school exam. I would read it once before classes start, and again when studying for your first exams.
> The social contract is a book by Jean-Jaques Rousseau.
Holy fuck. Seriously? So whenever some humanist says to you "well we should move society forward because of the social contract" you thought they were talking about some book written a couple hundred years ago? Jesus, I'm sorry.
Maybe do some reading and catch up on what's happened in the past 250 years:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism-contemporary/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/#H3
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism/
http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Justice-John-Rawls/dp/0674000781/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408065363&sr=1-1&keywords=A+Theory+of+Justice
>Secular humanists believe we have a duty to help all humans improve their lives, correct?
Sure, but this in no way entails that human life has a purpose. That some moral claims are true doesn't alone entail that any teleological claims are true.
If you're looking for some good prep work these books all helped me immensely.
1L of a Ride This one was my favorite and I looked at pretty often for my first month of school.
Reading Like a Lawyer
Expert Learning for Law Students
I feel like these three really gave me a good head start to law school. You cover the basic skills you'll be using your first semester (and all of law school, but you can tweak/find your own way after your fall semester). They give you some practice reading and briefing cases, help you figure out what to look for when you're studying and include some helpful tips on how to do well overall. They also include some good life tips of how to stay happy and feel comfortable outside of class.
The question of desert is central to considerations on justice. Two easy places to get an introduction online are the SEP’s entry and the IEP’s entry.
If you’re looking for particular texts, as far as the contemporary liberal tradition is concerned I recommend the contrast you can find between Walzer’s Spheres of Justice and Rawls’ A Theory of Justice.
In short, for Walzer desert and distribution should be considered based on a plurality of standards which he refers to as complex equality. Thus, ideas such as the right to vote and health care, as distinctly different social goods, should not be considered under the same ideas of desert and distributed according to the same principles. Whereas, by most readings, Rawls takes the route of making desert largely (or completely) inapplicable to matters of distributive justice, which is an interesting and ongoing debate in political philosophy on just how, if at all, desert matters for Rawls.
(Edit for type-o’s.)
I'm actually a minarchist who believes in a particular kind of restricted natural duty theory of social contract (Kant's justification for the state), but I was an ancap for a long time so I think I can give a good crack at an ancap answer.
>The social contract doesn't exist as a single legal document that one writes up and then signs, to be stored away for future reference.
As you say, the social contract is very clearly not a single historical event which establishes consent. However, this is one very common way of arguing for a particular kind of social contract (in particular, it's a common libertarian way of arguing for a social contract), so it's not as if ancaps are just strawmanning the position.
The general problem seems to be establishing:
(1) what the contract actually is
(2) how it's established
If the social contract is supposed to operate like any other contract, so that you 'consent' to the terms of the contract by an actual act of consent, then there are some pretty clear problems. For one thing, it's hard to identify what specific actions constitute consent - and, if you didn't perform those actions, would that constitute non-consent? For instance, if using government roads means that you consent to the government, then does not using those roads mean you don't consent? Second, it seems like the only way that a lot of these conditions for consent can "get going" in the first place is through something you did not consent to - for instance, in order for the government to begin to provide services for the "first citizens" who benefited from those services, the government probably coerced those citizens to make that provision possible (for example, by taxing them, or by preventing competing organizations from providing the same services). This is most clearly the case with law/security/defense.
For example, if the US government commanded the obedience of native Americans because they were "residing on US government land", this wouldn't be legitimate, because the only reason the US government "owns" that land is by conquering and subjugating the non-consenting Indians; so the conditions for consent depend on a coercive act, which invalidates the state's claim to those conditions.
This general approach to social contract theory, which establishes some way of providing actual consent, is called a transactional consent theory - the idea is that people have certain moral rights in a vacuum, but that that transact or transfer those rights to the state by an act of consent. There are other credible approaches to justification of a social contract, but I think it's pretty clear that the transactional model (which most libertarians criticize) is not one of them. It ends up boiling down to "you relate to the government by X, which means you consent", and libertarians saying (probably correctly) that "the only reason X exists is because the government coerced me prior to establishing X!"
> It exists as a state of relationships between people, communities and societies. We observe it's natural convention at work when we interact with our friends as opposed to strangers, family members as opposed to foreigners, and as one nation in contrast with other nations.
This is a more 'associative' theory of political obligation - the idea is that, because you exist in some unchosen association with other people, this establishes some sort of collective obligation for people due to this association. But it seems like the problem with this theory is that, absent some more ethical work to flesh it out, it's only begging the question: we have a political obligation to people based on X association (family, clan, race, nation, humanity, etc.) because... why, exactly? It seems like the answer is just "because of the association" (we can talk about all the details of that association - the fact that you share certain characteristics or have a shared history, or because you tend to cooperate together, or something else), but, again, it seems like it builds the conclusion ("unchosen associations imply obligations") into the premise.
I don't think it's quite as simple as that, because I think it is possible to mount a compelling defense of an associative theory of political obligation (it's actually a theory associated more strongly with conservative political philosophy - although your flair says you're a socialist, the best sources for this sort of theory are, imo, Aristotle and Edmund Burke). But it's not very compelling for most people today, because people today generally think that consent is a morally important factor for the sort of stuff that the state does, and the social contract is supposed to show us that consent actually exists. This associative theory might establish that we have a duty to obey the law and the state has a right to command us, but it doesn't establish that this relationship is consensual (for the theorists I have in mind who advocate this theory, however, consent simply isn't important for establishing political authority or obligation).
>In any country you live in, certain rights are accorded to you as a citizen that aren't available to other people who aren't.
First, ancaps will disagree with this characterization of rights. Ancaps think (and I do too, even though I'm not an ancap) that rights are logically and historically prior to the state: even if there exists no state, you have certain rights, and these rights don't depend on their being secured to be morally important (for instance, even if you have no way of defending yourself and you live in a stateless island, it would still be a violation of your rights for someone else to kill you).
Second, it's unclear what the sort of positive rights you're talking about have to do with the social contract without at least some further explanation. The mere fact that you are given special privileges doesn't seem to imply that your relationship with the person who grants those privileges is consensual - for instance, you might be accorded rights to water use against your neighbors (so that your neighbors can't use some water, but you can) because of a local warlord who prefers you to your neighbors. But this doesn't mean that everything else the warlord does to you is consensual; all it means is that he's nicer to you than everyone else.
>When someone talks about the social contract, this is simply what they're referring to (1).
Yes, yes, we all know who John Rawls is. However, the defense of social contract theory which you've provided is actually not much like John Rawls's theory of justice at all. If you're going to condescendingly posture yourself as better educated than we stupid libertarians, at least be better educated.
>Claiming that you're not part of a larger social system because nobody presented you with a piece of paper is just a straw man argument, you understand it in your public and private behavior every day.
See: all above.
At least for Anarchists or other left-libertarians it should also be important to actually read up on some basic or even fundamental ethical texts given most political views and arguments are fundamentally rooted in morality (unless you're a orthodox Marxist or Monarchist). I'm sadly not familiar enough with applied ethics to link collections of arguments for specific ethical problems, but it's very important to know what broad system you're using to evaluate what's right or wrong to not contradict yourself.
At least a few very old texts will also be available for free somewhere on the internet like The Anarchist Library.
Some good intro books:
Some foundational texts and contemporary authors of every main view within normative ethics:
I recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Maybe-Excel-School-Exams/dp/0890897603
It was like a security blanket for me when I was a 1L. Also, I found it helpful to draft the “Rule” portion of the IRAC essay and add it to my outlines. So the first page of a topic had a box full of “rules.” Drafting that portion of an essay really helped score easy points on exams and saves time when you have an open-note exam! It also helps you solidify your understanding of the law.
Happy studies!
After doing this for a long time I have come to the conclusion that no "single" way is the best way. Take a little from everyone and fit it in to what works best for you and how you think.
If you get a chance read Terry McCarthy's book on cross. He's a lifelong PD and while he incorporates much of the Pozner and Dodd methods (and the 3 rules) he does it from the perspective of a defense attorney.
As for actually prepping crosses, for the last 5 years or so I have been using the Simple Mind app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.modelmakertools.simplemindfree&hl=en
Rather then thinking about cross in a linear fashion, the simple mind app allows you to create flow charts so you can pivot to any topic without shuffling through papers and perhaps losing your place.
https://www.amazon.com/MacCarthy-Cross-Examination-Terence/dp/1590318862
John Rawls, Justice as Fairness
Virtually any modern political philosophy is either based off, or a refutation of Rawl's work.
It's a must read.
Getting To Maybe
As a second-year law student, and a guy who threw his heart and soul into the law school application/admission process, I want to offer a few pointers here, maybe lead one person down the right path.
Some highly suggested reading before you start thinking about law school:
I'm not trying to out-and-out discourage you from going to law school. If you actually do research, then find out it's what you really want, go for it. Crush the LSAT out of the park and go somewhere that will guarantee you a job. Do not go to a fourth-tier law school (John Marshall, Florida Coastal, Cooley, etc.) just because they sent you a bunch of marketing materials in the mail with an offer for a free scholarship. These places are the University of Phoenix of law schools. Any law school that has to advertise by mail really isn't worth the price of the (worthless) degree.
> So, if black people choose to remain in the country, they have to abide by how they're treated? What about being poor, if they don't like the country they should move somewhere else?
Don't get what black people have to do with anything. If you want to import irrelevant context to imply something I never said, you're welcome to do it, but you're arguing in bad faith at that point.
The basic point is that to the extent that you and I are citizens (I'll take it to be for the sake of argument you live in the US as do I) of this country, we consent (insofar as we continue to accept and be okay with things, despite whatever reservations we have) to one degree or another to the way things currently are, and we have a say and a share in a wide variety of things, as members:
And which also includes our right to challenge the status quo (as has been done many times in our history). And you can go down the line as far as you want to, part of which I illustrated to another person a while ago.
> The social contract is the equivalent of saying it's okay for you to beat your wife because she hasn't left you yet.
Contractarianism is a highly sophisticated and nuanced moral philosophy. One that I adhere to with respect to certain tenets. And you hardly do it justice with one sentence that sweeps it under the rug. If you have any actual interest however, I'd start with John Rawls. You know as well as I do that statement is pure nonsense.
Three books I'd suggest, in the order I'd read them:
Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
The Road to Serfdom by FA Hayek
Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick
Outside the libertarian canon, Rousseau's On the Social Contract and Rawls' A Theory of Justice should be on everyone's reading list. Rawls and Nozick are probably the two most influential political philosophers of the late 20th century and understanding their arguments about the justification of property rights and the original position are the ABCs of modern political debate.
Getting to Maybe is the answer. One-L, Planet Law School, etc. are not useful.
Read Getting to Maybe over the summer, read it again mid-way through the semester, and flip through it before your exams.
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-To-Maybe-Excel-School/dp/0890897603
I am not affiliated with Richard Fischl, just a law student.
At the outset, please note that this topic is exceedingly slippery. I am convinced that the most efficient way to understand these issues is through the study of philosophy of ethics.
> Where do atheists get their [sense of] morality?
Nature, nurture, and the phenomenological self-model.
> What defines the "good" and "bad" that has
permeated much of human society?
Easy: notice that personal definitions of morality between individuals immersed in the same culture tend to strongly overlap (e.g., most moderns consider rape to be "bad").
From this considerable volume of data, it is fairly simple to construct principles that adequately generalize these working definitions, such as "promote happiness", and "mitigate pain".
> [If you're not caught, why not murder? Why donate to charity? Does might make right?]
These questions appear to have both practical and intuitive solutions.
What are you trying to understand?
> How do atheists tend to reconcile moral relativism?
What do you mean?
> Barring the above deconstructions, how do atheists account for morality?
Moral theories largely attempt to bridge the gap between descriptive facts and normative commands:
> I'm gonna read that book just to get a better idea of what exactly I'm advocating for.
LOL, not my intention to spread the ideas I disagree with. But it sounded like a thesis you would.
> Do we know this? I don't think we do
I think the evidence suggests this. And it makes sense to me that the lives of people who highly value self-reliance are going to generally be far better than those who don't share that value and who are perfectly content to be on the dole.
At the risk of going down a completely different rabbit trail my view is actually a little more complex since I DO think interdependence in the context of family and community is important and of great value. I'm all for Edmund Burke "little platoons" of family, church and local neighborhood. It is large impersonal institutions that reliably fail, they cannot know and love the individual, they cannot make the moral judgments that a loving parent, or an increasingly impatient neighbor might make when presented with yet another plea for next month's rent. I very much agree with the title of Hillary Clinton's book "It takes a village" I don't think she understood the full meaning of the proverb... since she turned it around to mean: "It take a large impersonal bureaucracy" which is NOT the same thing at all.
> If you have any other reading suggestions then I'll take a look. I don't want to become massively entrenched in my views
None of these are necessarily related to your discussion though they might touch on some similar topics.
I recently read Haidt's The Righteous Mind not actually a conservative book but one which is really interesting in terms of figuring out why liberals and conservatives talk past each other.
And there's always the conservative classics that you'll always get when people ask. A few personal favorites: Kirke's The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom though technically he'd insist on calling himself as a "liberal" (By which he means a classical 19th century liberal) I liked Bastiate's The Law if you want an actual 19th century liberal. The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
Those last two are both relatively quick and easy reads.
And of course Sowell has written extensively on exactly this subject. I think Race and Economics was his first book so it may be a bit dated now.
Sadly I've not read that one nor his other books that seem most directly related to our discussion. Personally I've only read his Basic Economics and I read Race and Culture years ago which is somewhat related but about the impact of race, ethnicity and culture in an international setting. His ideas about the primacy of cultural capital in explaining group differences in economic capital are consistent but he's applying those concepts internationally in how various cultural groups have done economically as majorities, as minorities, migrants, conquers or conquered etc. it's been a while but I remembered more about the overseas Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia than about blacks in America.
Priorities, in order:
And maybe peruse the /r/lawschool FAQ, which leads with a section on 0L prep.
In my school, as a 2L staffer, you are required to do lots of bluebooking, source verification and production related tasks + write a note or memo. It is 2-3 units. You need to put in some efforts, but no more than other 2-unit classes. You will learn how to pay attention to details, how to write academically (unfortunately, very different from professional legal writing) and become friends with lots of smart kids. There is a book that tells you more about law review experiences and academic legal writing: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Law-Review-Write-Competition/dp/1594605203
The Law by Frederic Bastiat. Published in 1850 but still very relevant today.
Bastiat also wrote Parable of the Broken Window and The Candlemaker's Petition.
The majority of the advice you'll get from this sub is different versions of "BE FREE, YOUNG GRASSHOPPER."
That being said, definitely enjoy yourself. When August rolls around, its time to start looking at syllabuses and getting your life together. But you should spend the time you have doing whatever makes you happy.
I read Getting to Maybe, I liked it. Not sure how useful it is, but... might be worth checking out.
ttk a lot of what you wrote kind of circles around John Rawls' concept of the Veil of Ignorance as a methodology for determining what's "fair." Specifically the part about things seeming fair or unfair depending one whether you're a vault-builder or a vault-breaker. The Veil of Ignorance approach would mean you design the rules assuming nothing about which position or role you would assume in the outcome, and for maximum fairness assume yourself to be the least-advantaged. That's what you essentially did with the griefer scenario.
>Had a quote from the article here but autowikibot made it redundant
Read some Rawls, homey. You seem largely on-board with parts of his outlook already and it might interest you to read the most-cited formulation of it.
I'm found John Rawls' theory to be quite persuasive.
The essential bit is how would you structure society if you didn't know where in society you will be born into. The analogy I remember is making rules for a card game before you know the hand you will be dealt. It gets a little trickier when you ask what the point of the game is. One clear winner? No clear loser? Even distribution of points no matter what? The chance for even a shitty hand to win?
For the lazy.
> My lsat was pretty good (175) but my gpa was only a 3.37, which makes me a splitter for most of the top schools. Do you think that's the sort of thing that comes up during interviews? Or is it something I should bring up myself to address? I don't have any real excuse, since my general academic performance was consistent throughout college as opposed to me falling ill or having a bad first semester or something.
Kudos on the high LSAT score! I honestly think you could see some serious scholarship money with that. I wouldn't bother bringing up the low GPA unless you're directly asked about it. What schools are you applying to?
> This is gonna be a bit of an odder one, but what is the number one thing you wish you had done before going to law school? I've got a solid 10 months or so before I trade all me free time to become a lawyer, and I definitely want to make the most of it.
Honestly, I think the best thing you could do is relax as much as possible. If you want to do something law-related to beef up your resume a little, you may want to consider doing some volunteer work at Christian Legal Clinics of Philadelphia or another legal clinic over the summer. When you begin applying to post-1L internship opportunities, every little bit helps. If you also have the time for some light reading, consider checking out Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams. Although I've personally never gotten around to reading it, I know other people who have raved about it.
https://www.amazon.com/Successful-Harvard-School-Application-Essays/dp/0312366116
Correct, the following maybe of interest for those that would like to understand this matter:
Condensed version:
https://www.hitpages.com/doc/4838941849026560/1#pageTop
In detail (I propose this is "essential reading" for all engineers):
http://www.amazon.com/A-Manual-Style-Contract-Drafting/dp/1614388032
Somewhat on this topic, English matters:
http://www.luc.edu/media/lucedu/law/students/publications/llj/pdfs/farrell.pdf
Read Getting to Maybe.
It sounds like you're describing a writing/organization problem rather than an understanding problem. You might want to take a look at ( http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Legal-University-Casebook-Series/dp/1599410028) to get an idea of the real world format the professors are looking for in the exams. Legal writing is pretty formulaic; you definitely don't want to just do stream of consciousness answering
Try reading Getting to Maybe.
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-To-Maybe-Excel-School/dp/0890897603
This is all I read, easy read and gives you a good idea of the process.
Everyone else recommends Volkoh, but I barely cracked the cover though.
This one. It's quite a bit more of a political philosophy book than an ethical one, so if he wrote more about ethics, I think it's elsewhere. This is probably most famous for his justification for income redistribution.
Utilitarianism says that the best action is one that increases the overall good. Rioting reduces "good" for lots of people (especially those who have their stuff destroyed or stolen) by reducing the overall "good" in society.
Some basic reading:
Utilitarianism and Other Essays.
On Liberty and Other Essays.
A Theory of Justice.
Utilitarianism is one of the major philosophies behind human/animal rights and abolition (of slavery). John Stuart Mill's writings have had a large impact on various political philosphies as well as science.
The Rule of Law by Tom Bingham is very good.
Also recommend What about Law which breaks down some of the main concepts of law such as tort, contract, criminal and equity.
https://www.amazon.com/What-About-Law-Studying-University/dp/184946085X
It's a very interesting subject that idea highly recommend studying
Buy this book now (either on kindle, kindle app on your tablet, or next day shipping). http://www.amazon.com/Getting-To-Maybe-Excel-School/dp/0890897603
It's a good explanation about how to approach an issue-spotter law exam.
Yeah, this dumb thing:
https://www.amazon.com/Bluebook-Uniform-System-Citation/dp/0692400192/ref=asc_df_0692400192/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312142542416&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7517880010963350880&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9052538&hvtargid=pla-316724181971&psc=1
This has pretty much everything citation-wise and you'll use it a lot during your 1L legal writing classes.
I'm in a similar position (0L) so I can't speak on how much it compares to the law school class but I've just started doing a chapter of this each week and it seems to be really helpful.
Hey, first of, congrats on getting into college! Second, breathe! You got time.
Now, to answer your questions:
First Question
If you are asking about what's the best school to attend in order to go to law school, I don't have any advice there. I went to UCLA and got into law school but I have heard of people going to community colleges, transferring to UCLA, and then going to Harvard Law School. So I don't know.
But if you are asking about which major you should choose in order to go to law school, my advice is that you don't need to a specific major (i.e. political science) to get in law school.
Case in point: I was a political science major during my first 2 years in college and I was miserable. I kept hanging in there because I thought that's what I needed to get into law school. Lies! I switched to a major I seriously enjoyed and graduated with a decent GPA but which could have been higher had I not spent time doubting myself.
Lesson: just do well. That's the only requirement you have during undergrad. Do well. Get a high GPA and study for your LSAT - those two will give you options when you start applying to law schools.
Second Question
You will learn all of the skills that you will need to succeed in law school in law school. But it doesn't hurt to get a head start the summer prior to law school. But to get a head start, you need to know the skills they are going to teach you in law school. Below are some of the skills they should teach you or you should learn in law school:
(a) How to read cases - sorry, I don't have a book to recommend for this one
(b) How to write case briefs - sorry, no resources here either
(c) How to cite cases and other sources - https://masteringthebluebook.com/ is what I would suggest. Law schools don't expect you to know how to cite anything when you start law school. Buuttt, I honestly wish I knew about this resource during my first year (1L year). Knowing how to cite cases, secondary sources, e.t.c. is a must. So why not get a head start? : ) You might end up impressing your legal writing teacher and getting on law review. (But no pressure).
(d) How to write memorandums in which you (1) state what the legal issue is; (2) provide your client's facts; (3) state the relevant legal rule (which you should have gotten from reading cases); and (4) analyze and then make an argument about how that legal rule applies to your client's situation
So the above is a list of some of the skills you ultimately want to have learned in law school. It is the foundation.
But what determines your grade in law school is not just the foundation but how well you can apply the law to a set of facts and under time constraints. I am talking about the exam. In law school, one exam per class is the norm though some professors may have midterms.
Law School Exams
I would recommend checking out this book --- Getting to Maybe: How to Excel in Law School Exams -- if you want to learn how to do well in law schools exams. Below is the link:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0890897603/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
To Summarize
(1) Choose a major you like and do well in that major and study for the LSAT!
(2) You can (if you want) get a head start before law school but you need to know what skills they will be testing you on and find resources that will help you build those skills.
Yeah, I'm from California. There is actually nothing that states that a rebuilt mag has to have any original parts, you just have to end up with the same number of assembled mags you started with.
For California Gunny's I really recommend this.
PS, shit has it been a year already? Didn't even notice!
I didn't have any specific ones in mind (I'm trying to find a great little book that is out of print but I have a pdf in my office somewhere), but MacCarthy on Cross-Examination appears well-reviewed on Amazon so I might pick it up myself: http://www.amazon.com/MacCarthy-Cross-Examination-Terence/dp/1590318862/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452780708&sr=8-1&keywords=cross-examination
I'd read this book or something similar (the guy who mentioned the 1L guide at top-law-schools may have the same info).
Hell if you want I can send you my copy of that book if you want.
It gives you insight into what to expect each year and fills you in on some basic stuff that you are just supposed to intuit once you get there.
>I wrote literally the bare-minimum on each exam
This tells you exactly what you need to fix. That's a good thing! Many people do not recognize what went wrong and continue to flounder. At least while you're in law school, do not ever do this again (unless given a word count limit or your professor explicitly requests the minimum). Obviously, don't just recite your outline or word vomit all over the page, but you should be fully and exhaustively explaining your entire analysis from the beginning. It will seem pointless, but you will need to bring up rules and/or cases just for the act of explaining why they are distinguishable or inapplicable (this supports your argument, while attacking the counter). I would suggest you take a look at Getting to Maybe.
Kindle Edition 2013, $4.99
I just finished law school. Try getting a book. I'm in California, so I don't know how Iceland's law school differs. I liked law school confidential: http://www.amazon.com/Law-School-Confidential-Complete-Experience/dp/031224309X
Also, take as many practice tests as you can. When I took the bar, I took dozens of practice tests for each subject. I wish I had done more when in school.
Making friends, and other advice on here is also very true.
Get him this book so he can ace all his exams first year.
Read Law School Confidential. It will give you a look at the good, bad, and ugly of law school and the first few years of practice.
Also, read this blog post by The Criminal Lawyer - "Is Law School Right for You?". While it was posted on a blog predominately about criminal law, it is still true for any specialization that you may be thinking about pursuing.
I remember reading this book a decade ago and it pretty much covered what law school and the early years of practice were like --particularly if you're aiming at big law. It's a little on the alarmist side, but I don't think that's a bad thing for people considering the profession.
What about Law? by by Catherine Barnard, Janet O'Sullivan and Graham Virgo
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Law-Review-Write--Competition/dp/1594605203/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458158466&sr=8-1&keywords=writing+on+to+law+review
I found this book helpful. And not a long read, either.
Need the following:
​
https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Like-Lawyer-Time-Saving-Strategies/dp/1611631106
​
Thanks!
I checked this one out from the library, it was a pretty good starting point.
https://www.amazon.com/Successful-Harvard-School-Application-Essays/dp/0312366116
https://www.amazon.com/Successful-Harvard-School-Application-Essays/dp/0312366116
LOL, you will be ahead of the poli sci and history majors without doing anything. Those undergrad programs do not prepare you for law school in any special or helpful way. Whatever your "quantitative major" is, you will be better equipped to succeed in law school because you have more experience with thinking logically and confidently, consistently, and rigorously applying rules to a set of facts/inputs.
If you really want a recommendation for how to prep for law school as a 0L, read Getting to Maybe in the summer before you start.