LAW

Thread dedicated to the discussion of Law literature.

What are some classics that should be read?

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Unironically Stirner.

Any fellow Lawfags got advice on how to repel thoughts of suicide? They never stop.

OP here. I don't have an answer but I can absolutely fucking relate.

Judge Dredd in 2000 A.D.

I saved a bunch of screenshots from a law philosophy/lit thread a week or so ago. I post some.

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Reddit screenshot someone posted.

Nice, user. Thank you.

Nope. Currently sitting in the cold, buzzing whitewashed room that is my office, wincing at the newfound pain in my back, wishing I'd followed my dreams instead of committing spiritual suicide and joining this profession.

Why are lawyers so universally depressed? Why don't they quit and do something else if it's so bad?

Fiction
>Billy Budd
>The Giver

Philosophy
>Any Rawls
>Everything Nozic
>Obviously Plato's Republic
>Augustine and Aquinas
>Calvin
>Bentham and Locke
>Writings of Oliver Wendall Holmes

Obviously these are not in any particular order.

You don't understand the pressure that qualifying for Law puts on a student, let alone getting a job in the field afterwards. We're in too deep. Don't cry for us, we're already dead.

But to me, it seems like being a lawyer is the closest thing to being a professional philosopher, plus all the goddamn paperwork.

So you're saying the road is so tough that ultimately it's not worth it?

Osborne, John Jay. "The Paper Chase." San Francisco, CA: Peninsula Road Press, 2011. Print.


Fischl, Richard Michael, and Jeremy Paul. "Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams." Durham, NC: Carolina Academic, 2015. Print.

>it seems like being a lawyer is the closest thing to being a professional philosopher

Not him, but absolutely not, this is a huge misconception that people have about practicing law. It's mostly mechanical, with a small bit of room for creativity in arguing your case if you are a litigator. Your philosophy is to get the most for your client that you can and protect his interests. The only people who really get to be philosophical in any sense are high level appellate judges, and there's only a couple hundred of those throughout the US.

>philosopher
Where does everyone get this idea? Law is entirely about paperwork and occasionally if you actually go to court you just have to out-Goldstein the other side by knowing every single precedent case in documented history and being more willing to twist shit around and make a 4 hour discussion out of whether or not a police officer searching a handbag is a violation of personal liberty until the magistrate lets you win just so you shut the fuck up.

Thank you. This should be above every door in every institution that teaches Law. You aren't Atticus Finch so learn your fucking precedents. At best you can Sean Penn from Carlito's Way.

Get a job that doesn't suck I guess.

Fiction:

A Frolic Of His Own by Gaddis
Bleak House by Dickens
The Trial by Kafka

Non-fic:

Bentham
H.L.A. Hart + progeny (Dworkin, Barry, Finnis, Raz, Rawls)

Dershowitz is a hack. O.W. Holmes is worth reading but not super jurisprudential. Same with Richard Posner, but more blinkered than Holmes.

Main's Ancient Law is a classic, formerly published by Everyman, and in used bookstores from time to time. Involved, but a solid, rewarding read.
Not yet a classic but a good bio I recently read is Gerald Gunther's Learned Hand. May even pick you up a little. Cheers_--