Fundamental Concepts of Anglo – American Law

This book consists of selected materials, cases and questions providing intellectual nourishment to meet the needs of students and professors, teachers, other fellovv students,vvhoever happens to be facilitatingothervvise benefıting from the process of collective learning through socratic questioning in the field of "Fundamental Concepts of Anglo-American Law".

I have been "teaching", or, rather, facilitating and moderating, a course on Fundamental Concepts of Anglo-American Law for the last seven years at Bilkent University School of Law in Ankara. I have been learning law in many jurisdictions, through different methods and in different roles, for the last 18 years of my life, accounting for half of it. As a qualified member of the İstanbul Bar for the last 13 years, New York Bar for more than 10 years, and as a Solicitor of the Law Society of England & Wales for more than 7 years, I found the opportunity to compare fundamental tenets of legal thought in different jurisdictions quite a bit. One particular method of developing an understanding of the law appealed to me the most: Christopher Columbus Langdell's stili prevailing perception of how to teach and learn law exists since 1870, and as far as I know this is the fırst book to be published in Turkey truly attempting to use that method; i.e. the socratic method.

I chose each case, material and concept very carefully, after intense deliberation, vvith a vievv to stretching the minds of lawyers raised in a Continental legal system. There are three main objectives of this book: (1) To allovv for learning the fundamental concepts of Anglo-American Lavv, (2) To allovv for learning how to learn through socratic method, and (3) To challenge the reader to realize that what matters is learning to anticipate the consequences of choice of legal policy, rather than only memorizing legal principles which are often too literal to serve the demands of the specific issue at hand.

The third one is the most illuminating goal to be achieved vvith any student of the continental legal system. The code oriented approach of Continental legal systems and the habit of teaching the current status of the black letter lavv as the truth present endless opportunities to budding lavvyers to alienate themselves from the very consequences of their ovvn decisions and choices in the field of lavv. Only if they vvere to realize even as students that they vvill inevitably assume the duty to play in the joints of this machine called the lavv, they could then shovv the character to hold themselves accountable for their ovvn choices of legal policy in the future, rather than hiding behind the vvorkings and ready-made decisions of a mystical machine of lavv, as the machine vvould then be their servant and not vice versa. As their understanding of the indeterminacy of lavv vvould grovv, so vvould their avvakening to the fact that lavv vvill be vvhatever they do vvith it in the future...