Inside the Black Box: The Substance of Law

Abstract This chapter discusses how people classify the law and examines some of its main substantive areas. It starts with a brief history of legal classification, tracing such efforts from the Romans to England’s Blackstone’s Commentaries to early and modern American classifications. The chapter then provides an overview of the law of contracts, torts, property, succession (including wills and trusts), family law, and business associations. The final part of the chapter describes the distinction between public law and private law, a distinction that is becoming less and less relevant as time goes on and fewer disputes can be characterized as entirely “private.”