What Every Law Student Needs To Know About

Legal Thinking Before Setting Foot in Law School

by
John Bosco

So, you want to become a lawyer! Congratulations! Over the course

of the next three years your law professors will expect you on your own
to figure out how to receive, process and send legal meaning. They don’t
teach you; you teach yourself. They burden you with judicial opinions,
statutes and regulations and, crossing their fingers, they hope that you
will deduce from these examples how to think like a lawyer. To me this is
pedagogical malpractice. Every law student on entry into law school ought
to be handed a standard ideology that would, without fail, generate in its
users’ minds a fair and accurate representation of a law rather than just
a poor, low fidelity, approximation. Upon matriculation, every law student
ought to be given a compass whose needle always points in the direction
of legal understanding. Law schools should build for their students the
framework in which legal understanding takes place and not expect their
students to build it for themselves. To give you what your law school will
not, I have created A Unified Theory of a Law. It comes with the Periodic
Table of the Elements of a Law. In this article, I wish to share with you
some of its highlights. By reading this and my other articles, you will be
show up at law school with an advantage over your peers.

1) A law is simple not complex. Don’t let your law professors tell you
differently. The facts may be complex but never a law. The reasoning
why a lawmaker prefers one permutation of a law over the other two
permutations may be complex but never a law. The boundaries that define
a law have been discovered, explored and mapped. A Unified Theory of
a Law is the map. A law, when properly understood, is akin to a cow that
gives the same quantity of milk no matter who does the milking. A legal
genius can milk a law for no more meaning than an ordinary legal thinker
who understands A Unified Theory of a Law.

2) Everybody understands a command from the point of view of a

Source of conduct. The laws original top ten - The Ten Commandments
- were expressed as commands from the point of view of the source. For
example, Thou shall not kill. However, when the law is not a command
but a permission or when a command or permission are looked at from the
point of view of the recipient of conduct, all bets are off and understanding
goes out the window. My article entitled ‘Test Your Legal Literacy By
Asking Yourself One Questions’ is premised on the proposition that almost
all lawyers do not understand the permission. The legal literacy test is ‘Is it
permissible for a motorist to drive through a green light.’ Everybody says
‘Yes, it is permissible’. Though counter-intuitive, the answer is wrong. If it
were permissible for a motorist to drive through a green light it would also
be permissible to stop at a green light for that is the nature of a permission.
However, the lawmaker does not want a motorist to stop at a green light.
The Lawmaker wants a motorist to go at a green light. Hence, driving
through a green light is not permissible; it is mandatory. Conduct is legal
if done or not done in accordance with either a permission or a command.
Driving through a green light, though legal, is legal because it is mandatory
not because it is permissible.

3) The essence of lawmaking is who decides: 1) the lawmaker or 2)

the source of conduct. A lawmaker reserves the decision whether or not
a source of conduct ought to engage in a course of conduct to herself by
issuing a command. This is known as regulation. A lawmaker delegates
the decision to a Source of conduct by issuing a permission. This is known
as deregulation.

4) Conduct comes in two polarities: 1) affirmative and 2) negative.

Affirmative conduct is conduct that is on or flowing. Negative conduct is
conduct that is off or still. There is no difference between affirmative and
negative conduct other than the polarity.

5) Always view the facts as a flow of conduct from a Source doing

conduct to a Recipient receiving conduct in circumstances. This is the best
way to view the facts? Why? Because our courts view the facts like this. In
a court of law, typically, there are two parties, a plaintiff and a defendant.
This occurs because conduct has two ends. On one end of conduct is a
Source of conduct who in court is called the Defendant. On the other end
of conduct is a Recipient of conduct who in Court is called a Plaintiff. If
conduct had one end or more than two ends, the number of parties in a
court of law would be different than two.

6) A law comes in any of three permutations. 1) a command for

affirmative conduct, 2) a permission for both polarities of conduct or 3)
a command for negative conduct. Three (3) is it. Unlike ice cream that
comes in a variety of flavors, a law comes in only three (3). Why? Because,
like us, a lawmaker can form only three opinions with regard to a flow of
conduct in circumstances. 1) She wants to turn the flow on. She expresses
this opinion with a command for affirmative conduct. 2) She does not care
whether or not the flow of conduct is on or off. She expresses this opinion
with a permission for either polarity of conduct. 3) She wants to turn the
flow off. She expresses this opinion with a command for negative conduct.

7) The geometric shape of the triangle is a good metaphor for

keeping A Unified Theory of a Law straight in your head. Occupying the
top of the triangle is a lawmaker who despises a flow of conduct from a
Source doing conduct to a Recipient receiving conduct in circumstances at
its base. The Source occupies the left corner of the base and the Recipient
the right corner of the base.

The focus of a Lawmaker shifts between the Source and the

Recipient. This creates the two legal relationships in A Unified Theory of a
Law.

The leg of the triangle between the Lawmaker and the Source of
Conduct represents one of the two legal relationships in A Unified Theory
of a Law. In this relationship a lawmaker forms any of three opinions: 1)
she wants the Source to do the conduct 2) she does not care whether or
not the Source does the conduct or 3) she does not want the Source to
do the conduct. If she wants the Source to do the conduct, she issues a
command for affirmative conduct and binds the command to the Source
with a duty to do the conduct. If does not care whether or not the Source
does conduct, she issues a permission for either polarity of conduct and
binds the permission to the Source with a Privilege to do either polarity
of conduct as the Source decides. If she does not want the source to do
the conduct, she issues a command for negative conduct and binds the
command to the Source with a duty not to do the conduct.

The leg of the triangle between the Lawmaker and the Recipient of
Conduct represents one of the two legal relationships in A Unified Theory
of a Law. In this relationship a lawmaker forms any of three opinions:
1) she wants the Recipient to receive the conduct 2) she does not care
whether or not the Recipient receives the conduct or 3) she does not want
the Recipient to receive the conduct. If she wants the Recipient to receive
it, she issues a command for affirmative conduct and binds the command
to the Recipient with a right to receive the conduct. If she does not care
whether or not the Recipient receives the conduct, she issues a permission
for either polarity of conduct and binds the permission to the Recipient
with a no-right to receive either polarity of conduct. If she does not want
the Recipient to receive the conduct, she issues a command for negative
conduct and binds the command to the Recipient with a right not to receive
the conduct.

8) Shorthand has developed to make it easier to talk about

commands and permissions from the perspective of a Source doing
conduct and a Recipient receiving conduct. These shorthand words
lose all meaning if they are divorced from the three opinions a lawmaker
can have towards the two polarities of conduct. Below is a chart of the
legal possibilities for any flow of conduct from a Source to a Recipient
in circumstances. It is out of the three opinions of a Lawmaker that the
meaning of these words arises.

Source
a Duty to do affirmative Conduct
a Privilege to do either affirmative
or negative conduct
a Duty to do negative conduct
Recipient
a Right to Receive Affirmative
Conduct
a No-right to receive either
affirmative or negative conduct
a Right to receive negative conduct

Understand what is explained in this article and my other articles

and you will have an advantage over your peers in law school. Within
the framework of A Unified Theory of a Law, all legal understanding
takes place. In a A Unified Theory of a Law the boundaries that define
a law have been discovered, explored and mapped. All knowledge of
a law exists within these boundaries. Outside these boundaries, as the
mapmakers of old would say, “hic sunt dracones”.

In composing A Unified Theory of a Law, I began with the insight

that a law, like uranium, was fissile. It can be split into two components
1) its words and 2) its structure. They exist independently of each other.
Together they constitute a law. While many have taken notice of the
words of a law, knowledge of the structure of a law is still rare. The words,
like ornaments, adorn the structure of a law. The words change; but the
structure stays the same. Like the DNA of a cell, the structure of a law
repeats itself over and over again in every instance of a law. To generate
a law's meaning, both its words and its structure cooperate. Anyone who
wishes to push meaning into or pull meaning out of a law must be mindful
of a law's structure. Any failure to respect the structure of a law generates
inscrutable legalese and legal misunderstanding

When you encounter a law that you do not understand in law school,
try to translate into the terms that you have learned in this article. If this
proves impossible, then what you are trying to translate is not a law
no matter how much your professor insists that it is. In practicing law
for nearly thirty years, I have seen more legal misunderstanding than
understanding. Each lawyer in the legal world receives, processes and
sends legal meaning in his and her own idiosyncratic way. Every lawyer
is communicating on his or her own frequency. Legal meaning is more
often garbled than not. A Unified Theory of a Law is your refuge - the place
to which you can resort where all is meaningful and the meaningless is
forbidden to enter.