In American courts, there’s something called case law. That means we don’t just make rules in the abstract; rather, we learn from real and experienced situations. Someone actually did something, there were consequences, and that story becomes a wisdom-pattern for everyone else. James Boyd White says law is basically “a world you learn how to live inside.” In other words — it’s less like reading instructions, and more like being formed by someone else’s real experience.

What if we read Deuteronomy that way?

When God says things like: “If you build a new house, put a parapet on the roof…” (Deut 22:8) —
He isn’t giving random religious dogma — He’s providing case law.

It’s God saying: someone once got hurt. Learn from their story. Live wisely because of it. Embody the 6th Commandment (preservation of life).

So when Psalm 1 says “meditate on the law day and night,” it isn’t about memorizing rules — it’s about inhabiting a moral world already shaped by real lives, real consequences, and real covenant history. As such, we can label the law as second-hand experience — laws are meant to consider the steps that led to the law’s installation.

An Example

Let’s do a thought experiment with Deut. 22:8.

When Deuteronomy commands, “When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof” (22:8), this is not some form of architecual micromanaging for the ancient Near Eastern HOA — it’s God training moral imagination. The Israelite was meant to think backward — “Someone in this community once fell from a roof. A moment of joy (a new house) became a household of grief.” That unrecorded story of avoidable tragedy now lives inside the law. This is how case law works: not abstract principle, but second-hand participation in remembered tragedy and proposed solution. In other words: its experiencial wisdom. As such, the question is not, “What rule must I obey?” but “How do I love my neighbor?” The 6th commandment is not “Do not kill” but “how do I not neglect the conditions that make preventable death likely.” The parapet is more than a fence — it is covenantal foresight. It is how wisdom prevents another funeral.

In the law, God is training His people through remembered lives and experiences that they didn’t personally live in order to instill a culture of godly wisdom.

As such, we don’t merely study Deuteronomy: We are meant to enter it — to let someone else’s faithfulness, or failure, disciple us before we ever face it firsthand.

Think Through Process, Not Just Results

In short, when we read Deuteronomy or the Sermon on the Mount, we are meant to read it as both derivative and constitutive. The wisdom of the law is learned through its derived reality of covenant past, and forms us constitutively for covenant future. Living with the mind of Christ demands thinking through the process that formed the law, not just the end result of the law.

This is what the Pharisees missed, and what Jesus exemplified.