Intro to Law Syllabus

A complete, free introduction to law — not memorizing statutes, but understanding what law actually is, how courts reason from precedent, how the Constitution works, the interpretive fights that decide everything, and the practical fields from contracts to criminal procedure. Twelve courses, built to be read in order, from the Quarex law library.

12Courses
144Chapters
1,000+Topics

Module 1 · What Law Is

The foundations: where law comes from, how the common law reasons from case to case, and how the Constitution structures the whole system.

1 What Is Law? Sources, Authority, and How Rules Become Binding 12 ch.
  1. What Law Actually Is: Authoritative Rules Backed by Force
  2. Where Law Comes From: The Six Sources and Their Pecking Order
  3. Why We Have Law at All: From Hobbes's Leviathan to Modern Functionalism
  4. The Rule of Law: What Dicey, Fuller, and Hayek Demanded Beyond Mere Rules
  5. Public Law vs. Private Law: Who the State Is Suing Versus Who Is Suing Whom
  6. Civil vs. Criminal Law: Different Standards, Different Stakes, Different Remedies
  7. Substantive vs. Procedural Law: The Right You Have Versus How You Claim It
  8. How a Bill Becomes a Law: Where Legislation Goes to Die
  9. How Judges Make Law: Marbury, Judicial Review, and the Countermajoritarian Difficulty
  10. Federalism: When State Law and Federal Law Collide
  11. Why People Obey Law: Legitimacy, Deterrence, and Tom Tyler's Procedural Justice
  12. Where Law Fails: Enforcement Gaps, Capture, and Civil Disobedience as a Check
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2 The Common Law Tradition: Precedent, Cases, and How Courts Reason 12 ch.
  1. Norman Origins: How English Royal Courts Built a Common Law
  2. Law and Equity: Two Court Systems, One Merged Tradition
  3. Stare Decisis: What Binding Precedent Actually Means
  4. Horizontal and Vertical Precedent: Who Binds Whom
  5. How a Precedent Is Built: Holding, Dicta, and Ratio Decidendi
  6. Reasoning by Analogy: How Lawyers Argue From Cases
  7. The Restatements and the American Law Institute
  8. Tort, Contract, Property: Where Common Law Still Lives
  9. When Statutes Meet Common Law: Narrow Reading and Quiet Survival
  10. Overruling: When Courts Discard Their Own Precedents
  11. Judges Who Built the Doctrine: Mansfield to Posner
  12. Common Law, Civil Law, and the Decline of Pure Case Law
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3 Constitutional Law: How the Document Actually Works 12 ch.
  1. What the Constitution Actually Says: Structure of the Document
  2. How Congress Got Its Powers: Article I and the Legislative Branch
  3. How the Presidency Was Designed: Article II and Executive Power
  4. How the Federal Courts Work: Article III and the Judicial Power
  5. How the Court Claimed Power to Strike Down Laws: Marbury and Judicial Review
  6. What the Bill of Rights Actually Protects: The First Ten Amendments
  7. How the Fourteenth Amendment Remade Everything: The Reconstruction Amendments
  8. How Federal Power Grew Through the Commerce Clause: Wickard, Lopez, and Sebelius
  9. What the First Amendment Protects: Speech, Religion, Press, and Assembly
  10. How Due Process and Equal Protection Created Modern Civil Rights: Brown, Roe, Dobbs
  11. How the Bill of Rights Came to Bind the States: Incorporation
  12. What the Roberts Court Has Changed: Dobbs, Bruen, and Loper Bright
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Module 2 · How Lawyers and Judges Think

The theories behind the practice: the great schools of legal thought, and the originalism-versus-living-constitutionalism fight that now decides the biggest cases.

4 Schools of Legal Thought: Natural Law, Positivism, Realism, and Critical Theory 12 ch.
  1. Why Schools of Legal Thought Matter Beyond the Seminar Room
  2. Natural Law: From Aristotle and Aquinas to Finnis and George
  3. How Legal Positivism Built the Modern Picture of Law as Command
  4. The Hart-Fuller Debate and What Nazi Law Revealed
  5. Legal Realism: Holmes, Llewellyn, Frank and the Judge as Human Being
  6. How Critical Legal Studies Turned the Realist Insight Political
  7. Law and Economics: Coase, Calabresi, Posner and Efficiency as the Master Principle
  8. How Behavioral Law and Economics Broke the Rational Actor
  9. Feminist Legal Theory: MacKinnon, Difference, Dominance, and Crenshaw's Intersection
  10. Critical Race Theory: From Derrick Bell's Academy to a National Political Fight
  11. Originalism and Textualism: How a Fringe Theory Captured the Supreme Court
  12. Living Constitutionalism, Dworkin's Law as Integrity, and Legal Pragmatism
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5 Originalism vs. Living Constitutionalism: The Interpretive Fight That Decides Everything 12 ch.
  1. The Interpretive Question: How a 1787 Document Governs in 2026
  2. Before the Theory: How the Warren and Burger Courts Decided Cases Without Methodology
  3. The Bork Moment: From Indiana Law Journal to the 1987 Confirmation Defeat
  4. From Original Intent to Original Public Meaning: Why Scalia Changed the Question
  5. Scalia Builds the Case: A Matter of Interpretation and the Textualist Turn
  6. The Federalist Society's Long March: How Originalism Captured the Legal Right
  7. Living Constitutionalism: Brennan's Georgetown Speech and the Moral Reading
  8. The Right Splits: Common-Good Constitutionalism and the Pragmatist Alternative
  9. Originalism in Practice: Heller, Bruen, and Dobbs
  10. The Strongest Critiques: Indeterminacy, Cherry-Picked History, and Brown v. Board
  11. Hybrids and Synthesis: Balkin's Framework Originalism and Baude's Liquidation
  12. Where This Is Going: A Solidly Originalist Court and the Next Thirty Years
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Module 3 · The Institutions

How the system is actually organized: the Supreme Court as a working institution, and the federal-state division of power that shapes every American legal fight.

6 The Supreme Court as an Institution: Justices, Power, and How Nine People Decide for 330 Million 12 ch.
  1. What Article III Actually Says: How Congress Built the Court the Constitution Barely Sketched
  2. How John Marshall Built an Institution: The Marshall Court, 1801-1835
  3. The Court's Worst Hour: Dred Scott, the Taney Court, and the Cost of Legitimacy
  4. Lochner, the New Deal, and FDR's Court-Packing Threat
  5. The Warren Court and the Rights Revolution, 1953-1969
  6. Retrenchment and Federalism: The Burger and Rehnquist Courts, 1969-2005
  7. The Roberts Court: Citizens United, Trump's Three, and the Post-Dobbs Configuration
  8. How a Case Gets to the Court: Cert, the Rule of Four, and the Cert Pool
  9. Inside the Building: Oral Argument, Conference, and How Opinions Get Written
  10. The Shadow Docket: Emergency Orders, Unsigned Opinions, and the New Power Center
  11. Confirmation Wars: From Bork to Jackson and the End of Stealth Nominees
  12. Reform, Legitimacy, and the Politics of Pretending Not to Be Political
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7 Federalism: How Power Is Divided Between Washington and the States 12 ch.
  1. Dual Sovereignty: What Federalism Actually Is
  2. Enumerated and Reserved Powers: The Original Deal
  3. McCulloch v. Maryland and the Reach of Implied Federal Power
  4. The Supremacy Clause and Preemption Doctrine
  5. The Commerce Clause Arc: Wickard, Lopez, and NFIB v. Sebelius
  6. The Dormant Commerce Clause: Limits on State Power
  7. The Tenth Amendment Revival and Anti-Commandeering
  8. Spending Clause Federalism: Strings on Federal Money
  9. Cooperative Federalism: How Modern Programs Actually Run
  10. Sanctuary Cities, Marijuana, and Abortion: Federalism in Today's Fights
  11. Climate, Guns, Education, and Elections: State Labs in Action
  12. Sovereign Immunity, Tribes, and Interstate Compacts
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Module 4 · Law in Practice

The working fields a citizen actually runs into — the deals you sign, the harms you suffer, how the state prosecutes, how lawsuits move, and how agencies regulate.

8 Contract Law: Promises, Breach, and What Courts Will Enforce 12 ch.
  1. What Turns a Promise into a Contract
  2. The Objective Theory: What You Said Versus What You Meant
  3. Consideration: Why a Gift Promise Usually Will Not Hold Up
  4. Offer, Acceptance, and the Mailbox Rule
  5. The Statute of Frauds: When the Deal Must Be in Writing
  6. Defenses: Mistake, Fraud, Duress, and Undue Influence
  7. Unconscionability and the Fine Print That Goes Too Far
  8. Performance, Breach, and Walking Away Early
  9. Excuses: Impossibility, Frustration, and Force Majeure
  10. Reading the Contract: Parol Evidence and Interpretation
  11. Damages: What the Court Actually Awards When a Deal Breaks
  12. The UCC, Adhesion Contracts, and the Consumer Reality
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9 Tort Law: When Someone Harms You and What You Can Do About It 12 ch.
  1. What a Tort Is: The Civil Wrong That Isn't a Crime or a Broken Contract
  2. Intentional Torts: When Someone Means to Hurt You
  3. Negligence: The Four-Part Test That Runs Most Lawsuits
  4. Duty: Who Owes Care to Whom, and the Palsgraf Split
  5. Breach: The Hand Formula and How Juries Decide What Was Careless
  6. Causation: But-For, Proximate Cause, and the Multiple-Defendant Headaches
  7. Damages: What Verdicts Actually Pay For and the Fight Over Caps
  8. Defenses: Comparative Fault, Assumption of Risk, and Running Out of Time
  9. Strict Liability and Products Liability: When Fault Doesn't Matter
  10. Medical Malpractice: The Standard of Care and the State-by-State Cap Experiment
  11. Mass Torts and Class Actions: Asbestos, Tobacco, Opioids, and Roundup
  12. Defamation, Privacy, and the McDonald's Coffee Case: The Torts Everyone Argues About
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10 Criminal Procedure: From Arrest Through Trial 12 ch.
  1. The Fourth Amendment: Searches, Seizures, and the Warrant Requirement
  2. How the Warrant Requirement Got Carved Up: The Major Exceptions
  3. The Exclusionary Rule: From Mapp v. Ohio to the Good-Faith Exception
  4. The Fifth Amendment: Self-Incrimination, Miranda, and Double Jeopardy
  5. The Sixth Amendment: Counsel, Juries, Confrontation, and Speedy Trial
  6. Arrest, Booking, and the First 48 Hours
  7. Grand Juries and Why Prosecutors Run the Show
  8. Bail, Pretrial Detention, and the Fight Over Cash Bail
  9. Plea Bargaining: Why 95 Percent of Cases Never See a Jury
  10. Discovery, Brady Obligations, and Prosecutorial Misconduct
  11. Inside the Trial: Jury Selection, Evidence, and Closing Arguments
  12. Sentencing, the Death Penalty, and Mandatory Minimums
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11 Civil Procedure: How Lawsuits Actually Move From Filing to Judgment 12 ch.
  1. Subject Matter Jurisdiction: The First Question in Every Federal Case
  2. Personal Jurisdiction: How a Court Gets Power Over a Defendant
  3. Venue, Transfer, and Forum Selection: Where the Case Actually Lives
  4. Pleadings: From Notice Pleading to Plausibility
  5. Service of Process and Joinder: Bringing People Into the Case
  6. Class Actions: When Many Plaintiffs Sue as One
  7. Discovery: The Phase Where Most Cases Are Actually Won or Lost
  8. Summary Judgment: When One Side Wins Before Trial
  9. Trial, Daubert Gatekeeping, and Judgment as a Matter of Law
  10. Settlement, Mediation, and Why 95 Percent of Cases Never Reach Verdict
  11. The Federal Arbitration Act and the Rise of Mandatory Arbitration
  12. Appeals, Preclusion, Erie, and the American Rule on Fees
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12 Administrative Law: The Regulatory State and How Agencies Get Their Power 12 ch.
  1. Why Agencies Exist: Congress, Expertise, and the New Deal Expansion
  2. The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946: The Rulebook for Agencies
  3. Meet the Agencies: EPA, FDA, FCC, SEC, NLRB, OSHA, FTC, and CFPB
  4. Independent Agencies vs. Executive Agencies: Why Structure Shapes Power
  5. Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking in Practice: From Proposed Rule to Final Rule
  6. Chevron Deference: The Doctrine That Defined Forty Years of Regulation
  7. Loper Bright (2024): The Supreme Court Overrules Chevron
  8. The Major Questions Doctrine: Reining In Agencies on Big Rules
  9. The Nondelegation Doctrine: Dormant Since 1935, Now Stirring
  10. Judicial Review of Agency Action: Arbitrary and Capricious, the Hard Look
  11. Cost-Benefit Analysis, Executive Control, and the Congressional Review Act
  12. Enforcement, Capture, and the Future of the Administrative State
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