Basics of Law (Intentional Torts) - Law School for Teens

This is a great introduction on how to think like a lawyer. Thinking is a skill that most people believe they have, but really they react emotionally to a problem rather than think it through. Learning to think like a lawyer allows you to detach from a situation and think it through from all angles.

This is a skill that is transferable to other areas of life. Ideally, as a student working their way through law courses, you will find yourself asking things like “Why?” and “What’s your evidence for that claim?” or “Why should I believe that statement?” This doesn’t make you a skeptic; it just makes you demand evidence for other people’s thinking, which is not always available!

This course is about tort laws, one of the basic subjects found in American law schools. We look at Intentional torts, which is where most law schools will start as well. Here, we challenge ourselves in an easily accessible way. We will look at such topics as battery, assault, and false imprisonment, conversion, trespass to land, trespass to chattel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress among other interesting topics. By understanding the elements of each tort, thinking them through, proving the elements with evidence from the fact pattern (the story problem of law), students will learn to think through an issue without resulting to an emotional reaction.