Tort Bunnies: Trees

January 03, 2011. Textbooks in general are a huge scam, but the notion of law school casebooks in particular bugs me. They're mostly printed collections of court cases, i.e. public domain material. Moreover, most law students already have access to those same materials electronically via WestLaw, LexisNexis, or whatever newfangled legal database is out there. Casebooks edit out the less interesting parts of a case for the convenience of the reader, but you could accomplish the same thing with a well-written syllabus (e.g. read part A, skip part B, read part C). There are also occasionally useful notes and comments after the actual cases, but for 4 out of 5 casebooks, I bet I could find something just as useful on Wikipedia.

That said, I still buy them -- but mostly for unreasons I'm unhappy about -- e.g. the final exam is open-book but not open-Internet. Such is life. I appreciate the existance of a robust resale market though, edition changes notwithstanding. Cheers for the first-sale doctrine!