Law 101 Quotes

“law lives in conduct, not on the printed page; it exists in the interactions of judges, lawyers, and ordinary citizens.”
― Jay M. Feinman, Law 101: Everything You Need to Know About American Law

“Law is not in the law books. Books are one of the first things that come to mind when we think about law: fat texts almost too heavy to lift; dust-covered, leather-bound tomes of precedents; law libraries filled with rows and rows of statutes and judicial opinions. While books tell us a lot about the law, they are not the law. Instead, law lives in conduct, not on the printed page; it exists in the interactions of judges, lawyers, and ordinary citizens. Think, for example, about one of the laws we most commonly encounter: the speed limit. What is the legal speed limit on most interstate highways? Someone who looked only in the law books might think the answer is 65 mph, but we know better. If you drive at 65 mph on the New Jersey Turnpike, be prepared to have a truck bearing down on you, flashing its lights to get you to pull into the slow lane. The speed limit according to drivers’ conduct is considerably higher than 65. And legal officials act the same way. The police allow drivers a cushion and never give a speeding ticket to someone who is going 66. If they did, the judges would laugh them out of traffic court. As a practical matter, the court doesn’t want to waste its time with someone who violated the speed limit by 1 mph, and as a matter of law, the police radar may not be accurate enough to draw that fine a line anyway. So what is the law on how fast you can drive? Something different than the books say.”
― Jay M. Feinman, Law 101: Everything You Need to Know About American Law