There Are No Laws—Only a Legal System

We grow up thinking laws are real things—fixed, objective rules that govern society. Break the rule, suffer the consequence. Simple.

But that's not how it works. What we actually have is a legal system. That system is real, powerful, and omnipresent. If you run afoul of it, it will disrupt your life: your finances, your freedom, your ability to function. So yes, there’s a system. But “laws,” as people imagine them—objective standards that are fairly and consistently applied—those don’t really exist.

Here's what I mean.

You can have airtight, exculpatory evidence. Everyone might even know it exonerates you—the judge, the prosecutor, your own attorney. But unless your lawyer introduces it in exactly the right way, using the right legal theory, at the right time, and unless he’s willing to burn political capital with the judge and the prosecutor (who he likely sees every day), that evidence might never see daylight.

Whether it gets used depends not on the “law,” but on:

• Your lawyer’s intelligence

• How hard he's willing to work

• How much you're paying him

• How emotionally invested he is in your case

• Whether he's willing to rock the boat in a system built on relationships

And even if he introduces it flawlessly, the prosecutor can always object. The judge can always agree. And now the “law” becomes whatever the judge randomly decided in that moment. Your tape, your emails, your smoking gun—excluded.

So what do we really have?

We have a system: judges, lawyers, procedures, relationships, norms. That system matters. It's coercive. But the idea that “laws” exist as universal rules that mechanically produce outcomes—that’s mythology.

The law isn’t a code. It’s a chessboard. And your lawyer’s skill, your resources, and the personalities of the players determine whether you survive the game.