The ledger
Progress
What Socratess keeps between tutorials. The ladder moves on what happens in the hour, not on marks.
Standing
| student | Mateas |
|---|---|
| level | 1 — first weeks of an undergraduate degree |
| term | Michaelmas, week 1 |
| tutorials sat | 0 |
| promotion rule | on observed behaviour in the hour — never on marks, never on time. |
What moves you up a level
- ☐stated a ratio correctly and unprompted
- ☐distinguished a case on its facts without being told to
- ☐said "I don't know" instead of fogging, at least once
The term ahead
- 1.Case law technique — the ratio decidendi
- 2.Precedent — bindingness and departure (the 1966 Practice Statement, London Tramways)
- 3.Statutory interpretation
- 4.Jurisprudence begins: Austin's command theory and Hart's critique (the withdrawn 15 August set is reused here)
- 5–8.Hart–Fuller; natural law; onward as the tutorials dictate.
Michaelmas: legal method first, then jurisprudence — re-sequenced 15 August 2026 on his objection (correct) that legal philosophy cold in week 1 outruns a first-year; at Oxford the Jurisprudence paper is a Finals subject. He reports private reading in the area (Austin, Hart), so theory enters at week 4 rather than later. The arc is a guide, not a rail — each week's topic still follows from where the last tutorial broke down:
The record
No tutorials sat yet. The first is 23 August.
What Socratess himself holds
Stated positions, so there is something to disagree with to his face.
- ·Ratio is rule-based, not fact-based — Cross over Goodhart.
- ·Constructive reinterpretation by later courts is real but bounded: the existence of overruling proves something was fixed.
- ·Rule-scepticism is a disappointed absolutism.
Points conceded to you
Nothing conceded yet.