The Full Archive
Updated May 13, 2026
A collection of fifty-nine long-form essays on courts, judges, the working bar, and the culture of American law.
By section
The essays are organized into four thematic sections:
- Court Gazing: Observations from courtrooms, judicial behavior, the daily theater of trial practice
- Lawyers on Parade: Portraits and profiles of attorneys, the practice of law, and the bar as a culture
- Legal History: Historical cases, judges, and figures in American jurisprudence
- Law and Culture: The intersection of law with poetry, film, dogs, dinner conversation, and everyday life
By essay
The essays are accessible at their original URL paths under /idN/. The complete list:
The full alphabetical and chronological index will appear here once we finish the article metadata pass. Each article is accessible directly by its /idN/ path. The homepage shows the most recent and most popular essays.
How to read the archive
The essays range from short observational pieces (under a thousand words) to long-form commentary (six to seven thousand words). They are not arranged in any required reading order. Three reasonable starting points:
- BurtLaw's Court Gazing: the essay that started the blog, on what actually happens in American courtrooms
- BurtLaw's Lawyers on Parade: a field guide to the working bar of greater Minneapolis, circa 2004
- BurtLaw's Legal History: six unfashionable Minnesota cases from before 1950 that explain more about the state's legal culture than any Supreme Court opinion of the past decade