Rule 15
Find Time for Outside Critical Reading
Lawyers, law professors, judges, journalists, and academics write books and articles on legal issues. Some are even popular. Many offer context, critique, history, and personal narratives around the cases you are reading and the larger issues of the law.
To understand constitutional law, you need to understand US history, and you will not find enough basic history in your casebooks. To understand the structural inequity of race, gender, class, and other forms of discrimination, you need to read the legal analysis of experts who have investigated and exposed the injustices. To understand the political and social currents pushing law’s evolution, you need to read about these forces. You get the idea. Read widely and critically. The law needs to be critiqued, and many smart minds have begun the process for you.
You are not bound by the professor’s reading assignments. Law school professors provide the minimum, not the maximum, of the available materials. You are teaching yourself, and you will not become a fully educated lawyer by just reading casebooks. For every subject in your class, there are literally hundreds of articles on the subject in law reviews and other publications. You should teach yourself the areas that will enrich your mind (and your career)
