Subway maps of law
Last night I saw a presentation by Pam Gray and Xenogene Gray about their eGanges [pdf] system for depicting legal structures. Their maps of law use soccer ball icons to show you when you're supposed to go down to a lower level of logic — say, to see the elements necessary to make a certain proposition true. Take a look at the pictures.
The eGanges system has got to be only a start. Laws should be pictures as well as texts accessible through Findlaw. We should have law museums, so that we can visit old bad laws. We should have interactive subway maps of law.
You should be able to interact in whatever way you want to with a legal picture — seeing where your facts fit, swimming in the river of the law, following the train — whatever metaphor you'd like to use. The text of laws will remain important; indeed, there could be competing “translations” of law into pictures. You might want to use a particular picture of a law in your closing argument. Perhaps that picture will be too prejudicial and your opposing counsel will object!
It was a fine, creative evening, and it made me want to go back to “Property: The Video Game.” But there just aren't enough hours in the day.