http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2009/04/10#law <P>Like I have any qualifications to say anything about this! <ul>Recommended: <li>Amar and Hirsch, <cite>For the People</cite> [I don't entirely agree with them, but it's very worth thinking through] <li><a href="http://balkin.blogspot.com/">Balkinization</a> <li>N. J. Coulson, <cite>A History of Islamic Law</citE> <li>Jay N. Feinman, <cite>Law 101: Everything You Need to Know about the American Legal System</cite> <li>Bernard E. Harcourt, <citE>Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age</cite> [<a href="../reviews/against-prediction/">Review</a>] <li>E. H. Levi, <cite>An Introduction to Legal Reasoning</cite> <li>Cass Sunstein, <cite>Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict</cite> [An earlier version, <cite>Political Conflict and Legal Agreement</cite>, is available for free as a <a href="http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/Sunstein96.pdf">113 page PDF</a>.] <li>Brian Tamanaha, "A Concise Guide to the Rule of Law" [<a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract=1012051">SSRN/1012051</a>] </ul> <ul>To read (thanks to Patrick Griffin for recommendations): <li>Larry Alexander and Emily Sherwin, <cite>Demystifying Legal Reasoning</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/9780521703956">blurb</a>] <li>Akhil Amar, <cite>America's Constitution: A Biography</cite> <li>Lawrence Baum, <cite>Judges and Their Audiences: A Perspective on Judicial Behavior</cite> [<a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8323.html">blurb, ch. 1</a>] <li>H. S. Commager, <cite>The American Mind</cite> <li>Neil Duxbury, <cite>The Nature and Authority of Precedent</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/9780521713368">blurb</a>] <li>Jay M. Feinman, <cite>Un-Making Law: The Conservative Campaign to Roll Back the Common Law</cite> <li>Gerg Gigerenzer and Christoph Engel, <citE>Heuristics and the Law</cite> [<a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/0-262-07275-0">Blurb</a>] <li>Axel Hagerstrom, <cite>Inquiries into the Nature of Law and Morals</cite> <li>Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., <cite>The Common Law</cite> <li>Larry Laudan <ul> <li><cite>Truth, Error, and Criminal Law: An Essay in Legal Epistemology</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/9780521861663">blurb</a>] <li>"The Defendant's Burden: the Onus Probandi and the Anomaly of Affirmative Defenses" [<a href="http://www.error06.econ.vt.edu/invitedspeakers.html">abstract</a> (about half-way down), <a href="http://www.error06.econ.vt.edu/Lauden.doc">MS Word preprint</a>] </ul> <li>John T. Noonan, <cite>Narrowing the Nation's Power: The Supreme Court Sides with the States</cite> [<a href="http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt5n39q4cc/">Free online</a>] <li>Barbara Shapiro, <cite>Beyond Reasonable Doubt and Probable Cause: Historical Perspectives on the Anglo-American Law of Evidence</cite> [<a href="http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft409nb30v/">online</A>] <li>Cass R. Sunstein <ul> <li><cite>Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong for America</cite> <li><cite>A Constitution of Many Minds: Why the Founding Document Doesn't Mean What It Meant Before</cite> [<a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8866.html">blurb, intro</a>] </ul> <li>Cass R. Sunstein (ed.), <cite>Behavioral Law and Economics</cite> <li>Brian Z. Tamanaha <ul> <li><citE>On the Rule of Law: History, Politics, Theory</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/0521604656">Blurb</a>] <li><cite>Law as a Means to an End: Threat to the Rule of Law</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/0521689678">Blurb</a>] </ul> <li>Mark Tushnet (ed.), <cite>The Constitution in Wartime: Beyond Alarmism and Compalcency</cite> <li>Tom R. Tyler, <cite>Why People Obey the Law</cite> [<a href="http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/8230.html">Blurb, afterword</a>] </ul>