The Spirit of the Constitution: A Selection of Classic Cases from the U.S. Supreme Court Over 200 Years

Author: Judicial Research Center, Law School, Peking University
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Features: It is said that a lawyer once summarized his legal education in university with a single sentence: "The little I learned has long been returned to the teacher." Whether we interpret this statement in any particular way, I believe those engaged in legal education might feel a bit restless. This is not to say that legal teachers have already formed a strong sense of professional honor, but rather that each teacher fears that one day their students might say such a thing to them. Times are changing, knowledge is being updated, and laws are being revised. But what are we teaching our students? What should we teach so that years later, students do not feel as though they have "given everything back to the teacher"? It seems that while teaching students the variable aspects of legal knowledge and statutes, we must also impart to them some unchanging legal principles. Of course, the "legal principles" we refer to here are not the same as those learned from legal theory textbooks, but rather the "reasons" that permeate and support the law. Such principles are often not learned in "Legal Theory" classes but in the classrooms of specific legal fields. In the traditional civil law legal teaching, the analysis and annotation of legal concepts and rules have always been important methods for exploring legal principles. These "legal principles" are often universal truths abstracted by lawmakers. When laws are applied to specific cases, however, due to the significant differences in the specific circumstances, historical conditions, and cultural backgrounds of each case, the universal legal principles learned from textbooks often fail to solve practical problems. For legal professionals, true legal principles are not abstract concepts but principles tailored to specific cases—after all, lawyers, judges, and prosecutors in the legal profession face specific cases every day. As a result, in recent years, there has been a consistent call in legal education to introduce the American "case method." Unfortunately, our understanding of the "case method" has long been mired in some misconception, believing it to be simply adding some specific cases when teaching statutes, thereby enhancing the visual and concrete understanding of the statutes. This is somewhat similar to the "teaching law through cases" that is popular in the media today. The true "case method" is based on common law. The "case method" identifies the legal principles and rules discovered or announced by judges from the legal reasoning process in specific cases. In these cases, we find that: although the law itself may not have changed, and the specific issues of the cases may not have changed, perhaps the social environment has changed, or even the personal values of the judges have changed—these changes can lead to changes in legal reasoning, ultimately determining the outcome of legal judgments. Therefore, what we find from common law is not universal, abstract legal principles. "The times change, and so do the laws," and in specific cases, we always encounter dialectical legal principles. This dialectical principle upholds not formal justice but often substantive justice. In the "case method," what matters is not the so-called "correct answer," but rather the legal reasoning process. Only in this way can we understand core concepts in common law theory, such as "technical rationality" and "practical rationality," and understand Posner's pragmatic legal theory: after carefully reading U.S. constitutional rulings, how can one still believe in the scientific objectivity of law? As a result, the "case method" truly teaches students not only specific legal knowledge but more importantly, the art of legal reasoning; legal concepts, legal rules, legal principles, and legal doctrines are merely toolboxes prepared for legal reasoning. Of course, legal reasoning techniques can also be considered a form of knowledge, but it is a "know-how" knowledge, not a "know-what" knowledge: even if you memorize a hundred methods of legal interpretation, you may still fail to perform even the simplest legal interpretation. This "know-how" knowledge must be practiced personally, just as science students must constantly solve practice problems to make theorems and formulas second nature. Similarly, legal reasoning techniques can only be fully grasped through repeated study of different classic rulings.