Six real cases that made the rules we live under — a snail in a bottle, an advert, a lifeboat, an interrogation room, an accounting system and a courtroom built from nothing.
Every case here actually happened, and each one created a rule that still governs ordinary life. A woman in Paisley who had not paid for her drink, and therefore had no claim against anyone — until five judges decided that responsibility does not run through receipts. A company that promised £100 to anyone who caught influenza, and discovered that an advertisement can be a contract. Three starving men in an open boat, and a court that refused to write down how you choose who dies. A labourer in Phoenix who signed a confession stating that he understood rights nobody had told him about. Hundreds of sub-postmasters prosecuted because the law assumed the computer was working and only the prosecutor could prove that it wasn't. And four governments who could have shot the men in their custody, and built a court instead.
Each case is a 50-minute C1 lesson: the real vocabulary of the case, the story in three parts — the facts, the argument, the judgment — one legal-register grammar focus drawn from the case itself, and timed speaking tasks. Every lesson makes you argue the losing side properly, because that is where the language actually lives. The Going Deeper tab always names the dissent and argues at least two readings; the lesson never announces a moral. Nothing here is legal advice, and jurisdictions differ — that is part of the discussion.
The six cases
The real vocabulary of the case — the terms the judgment actually used.
Three parts: the facts as they happened to a person, the argument, the judgment.
One structure of legal register, built up to something you say out loud.
What the case really tests — with the dissent argued at full strength.
Explain it, argue the losing side, then take it into four different rooms.