So what do those of us in law school learn, exactly? Generally speaking, one probably assumes, “The Law™.” Unsurprisingly, if that’s your answer, you’re probably right.
“Why waste my time with something so inane and banally obvious,” you ask? Simply because there really is no “The Law™” in the way that it is typically imagined, or at least how I imagined it before going to law school.
There are two “types” of law practiced in a majority of nations in the west. The first is called civil law, where the laws are codified in statutes and written laws, and judges decide whether or not a certain law applies on a case by case basis. The second is called common law, where an emphasis is placed on the rulings of courts. While these common law systems have statute, regulations, codes, and so forth, the way courts rule on and interpret this written law also constitutes a portion of the law. The gist of this all: civil law means court rulings are helpful for interpretation, but common law means court rulings are law themselves.
For those that recall Marbury v. Madison, where the United States Supreme Court declared that it had the power of judicial review (i.e., the Supreme Court could declare a law unconstitutional), it should make sense when I tell you that America belongs to a common law system.
So far so good, but this quickly gets us into some huge complications. First, we have fifty states and a federal government, each having their own court jurisdictions. Further, each of these is divided up into smaller circuits and districts. So we have all sorts of courts coming up with all sorts of decisions that vary (sometimes slightly, sometimes greatly). And, even though judicial decisions become law, that doesn’t keep the courts from overruling previous decisions or modifying them, further complicated by the fact that courts will overrule parts of previous decisions, but uphold them in part also.
Given this, it can be more properly said that, at law school, a student learns more how to think about the law, rather than just The Law™ itself. American law is always changing, and there is just absolutely so much of it that even a specialist in a certain field can never know all the law that applies, unless the field is excessively narrow (Passenger Elevator Law, anyone?). We do learn a large amount of common law material, but the important things we learn about these laws is how the courts or legislatures came to these laws, and how the courts have thought about them, found exceptions for them, or even decided they no longer apply.
The upshot of this is, if you ask me a law question, chances are I have absolutely no idea the answer to your question. So you probably don’t want to waste your time.
