[manquer]

Obviously you need subject knowledge, that should be implicit?

Keep in mind even today[1] ( in California and few other states) you don't need to go law school to write the Bar exam and practice law, various forms of apprenticeship under a judge or lawyer are allowed

You also don't need to write the exam to practice many aspects of the legal profession.

The exam is never meant to be a high bar of quality or selection,it was always just a simple validation if you know your basics. Law like many other professions always operated on reputation and networks, not on degrees and certifications.

[1] Unlike say being a doctor, you have to go to med school without exception

[A_D_E_P_T]

> Obviously you need subject knowledge, that should be implicit?

Well, in a lot of the so-called soft sciences, you can easily beat a test without subject knowledge. I had figured that the bar exam might be something like that -- but it's more akin to something like biology, where there are a lot of arcane and counterintuitive little rules that have emerged over time. And you need to know those, or you're sunk. You can't guess your way past them, because the best-looking guesses tend to be the wrong ones.

(For what it's worth, I realize that this mostly has to do with the Common Law's reverence of precedent-as-binding, and that continental Civil Law systems don't suffer as much from it. But I suppose those continental systems have other problems of their own.)

[manquer]

Statutory law is no exception, it is not only common law which is inconsistent.

Laws are not logical constructs, they are political constructs, why expect logic from them.

Laws are passed or repealed because it is popular or politically advantageous to do so, not necessarily because it is moral or common sense.

On top of that politicians pass stupid legislation without understanding what they are doing all the time, the infamous Indiana pi bill is a simple example, it almost became law and was stopped by sheer luck, a mathematics professor attending that day on a unrelated matter.

Laws are conflicting, confusing, ambiguous and misleading most of the time, that is expected, the legislating them is a messy process. The third arm of any government judiciary sole purpose is to handle this mess.

---

P.S. I cannot say whether continental legal systems are more robust, but perhaps healthier democracy results in better laws.

All democracies are flawed, U.S. democracy is not particularly healthy, it is not say an proportional multi-party representative system with fair distribution of power amongst all citizens.

From the founding it has been a series of compromises, the history is littered with representation fights such as for suffrage, Jim crow and voting rights, slavery, electoral college, number of states or the filibuster or anti Chinese laws and so on and on.

Don't get me wrong last 250 years have been incredible progress and great leaders put their lives down to make it better, hopefully it will be even better in the future, the struggles do show in the laws it is able to pass, repeal or update.

[Suppafly]

>Well, in a lot of the so-called soft sciences, you can easily beat a test without subject knowledge.

Reminds me of the mandatory trainings you take for work every year. Normal logical thinking can get you through most of them.