Fifty legal books worth reading

A clear account of what is special about legal reasoning: rules, precedent and analogy.

A short classic on how courts reason from case to case.

A classic guide for new law students in England and Wales, still widely recommended.

Friendly letters that explain what a law degree involves and how to get the most from it.

The best-known modern book on what law is and how it differs from orders and morality.

Teaches you to see both sides of an issue, which is what most exam questions reward.

A practical, widely read guide to getting through the American law school years.

Short, exam-focused outlines for the last weeks of revision.

A well-known preparation book for the LSAT's logical reasoning section.

A standard multiple-choice bar exam preparation book.

Practical steps and exercises for clear legal prose.

A short, direct guide to cutting legalese.

A guide to written and oral advocacy by a Supreme Court justice and a legal-writing expert.

A detailed catalogue of the principles used to interpret statutes and contracts.

The standard American legal dictionary.

The citation system for American legal writing and many law reviews.

A compact dictionary of legal terms, handy outside the United States.

The famous civil code of 1900, still the core of German private law.

The Napoleonic Code, the model for civil codes across Europe and beyond.

The 1881 book that gave American law its best-known sentence about experience.

A major theory of how judges should decide hard cases.

Sets out eight principles that a legal system must meet to be law at all.

The twentieth century's most influential book on justice as fairness.

A very readable tour of the main ideas about justice, with real dilemmas.

A short, elegant explanation of what the rule of law means and why it matters.

The 1764 book that helped start modern criminal law reform.

The source of the idea of separating the powers of government.

The standard introduction to comparing legal systems, by two German scholars.

A short, readable explanation of civil law for readers trained in common law.

A compact overview of the world's major legal traditions.

A scholarly but accessible introduction to the sources and history of Islamic law.

A well-known English-language guide to the Japanese legal system.

Explains German contract law to English-speaking readers, with comparisons.

A standard short introduction to the law that shaped Europe's civil codes.

A standard university textbook on the law of the European Union.

A widely used student guide to the Indian Constitution.

A large, detailed and respected commentary on Indian constitutional law.

A standard Indian textbook on contract law.

The long-standing commentary on India's penal code.

A clear and widely assigned American constitutional law textbook.

The classic English textbook on contract law.

A long-standing English criminal law textbook.

A clear and popular American criminal law textbook.

The essays that explained and defended the American Constitution.

The story of the case that gave poor defendants the right to a lawyer.

A readable inside account of how the US Supreme Court works.

A lawyer's account of defending prisoners and challenging unfair sentences.

A frank memoir of the first year at an American law school.

The novel that made many readers want to be lawyers.

A short novel about a man arrested and judged by a system he cannot understand.