Law Trivia
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93 free Law trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
47 free law trivia questions with answers. You do not need a law degree for these law trivia questions, just a good memory for the cases and codes that everyone half-remembers. The 93 questions run from the Code of Hammurabi and the Twelve Tables to Magna Carta, the Napoleonic Code and the US Constitution, and through the landmark Supreme Court cases: Marbury, Brown, Gideon, Miranda, Roe and Dobbs. There is also plenty of courtroom colour: the trial of Socrates, the Salem hangings, the Scopes Monkey Trial, Nuremberg, O. J. Simpson's glove, why Lady Justice at the Old Bailey has no blindfold, where 'the bar' gets its name, and the year England finally abolished trial by combat. It works as a legal round for a pub quiz, a law-school icebreaker or a civics class. Every answer has been checked against a documented source and each question shows its citation and a short explanation after you answer.
30 of 93 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who sets the number of justices on the US Supreme Court, which the Constitution leaves open?
Congress
Congress: it started the Court at six seats in 1789, settled on nine in 1869, and in 1937 refused Franklin Roosevelt's plan to add up to six more.
Q 02Which 1803 case established the US Supreme Court's power of judicial review?
Marbury v. Madison
Marbury v. Madison: John Marshall held that William Marbury was owed his commission but that the law letting the Court order it delivered was unconstitutional, so the Court gained judicial review by refusing a power.
Q 03Who was the first Chief Justice of the United States, nominated by George Washington in 1789?
John Jay
John Jay took the post two days after the Judiciary Act created the Court, resigned in 1795 to become governor of New York, and turned the job down when it was offered again in 1800.
Q 04Who became the first woman to serve on the US Supreme Court in 1981?
Sandra Day O'Connor
Sandra Day O'Connor was confirmed 99-0; three decades earlier she had won her first legal job, as a deputy county attorney, only by offering to work without pay or an office.
Q 05Which NAACP lawyer won 29 of his 32 Supreme Court cases?
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall: an early win forced the University of Maryland's law school, which segregation had kept him out of, to admit a Black student.
Q 06Which 1896 'separate but equal' decision did the Supreme Court's 1954 school desegregation ruling partially overrule?
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson upheld segregated rail cars after Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white, deliberately sat in a whites-only carriage so a citizens' committee could test the law.
Q 07What was the vote in the 1966 Supreme Court ruling requiring police to tell suspects of their right to silence?
5-4
Miranda v. Arizona was decided 5-4 in 1966, with Chief Justice Earl Warren writing the majority opinion requiring the warnings.
Q 08How did Clarence Gideon write the Supreme Court petition that won poor defendants a free lawyer?
In pencil on jail stationery
In pencil on jail stationery, Clarence Earl Gideon petitioned the Supreme Court; Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) was unanimous, and a jury acquitted him at his retrial.
Q 09Roe vs. Wade (1973) rooted abortion rights in which constitutional right?
Privacy
Privacy: the 7-2 majority found the right in the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause; 'Jane Roe', Norma McCorvey, had already given birth long before the ruling came.
Q 10Which 2022 case overruled Roe v. Wade?
Dobbs v. Jackson
The decision returned abortion regulation to the states after 49 years.
Q 11The Latin phrase habeas corpus, the name of the writ against unlawful imprisonment, literally means what?
You shall have the body
'You shall have the body' is the literal sense of habeas corpus; the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 codified the writ, and Lincoln suspended it in 1861.
Q 12What does the 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992 more than 200 years after it was proposed, regulate?
Congressional pay
Congressional pay: the 1789 proposal lay forgotten until a Texas student argued in a 1982 term paper that it could still pass, got a C, and campaigned until it was ratified.
Q 13Which Founding Father is popularly called the 'Father of the Constitution'?
James Madison
Q 21The 'eye for an eye' principle found in the Code of Hammurabi is known by what Latin name?
Lex talionis
Lex talionis, the law of retaliation, is the 'eye for an eye' principle; Hammurabi's penalties also varied with the victim's social class.
Q 22Which law code did a commission of ten men draw up for Rome around 450 BC?
The Twelve Tables
The Twelve Tables: plebeians pushed for written law because unwritten custom had been interpreted only by upper-class priests, and the tablets were posted in public for all to read.
Q 23Socrates was tried in Athens in 399 BC on charges of impiety and what else?
Corrupting the youth
James Madison drafted the Virginia Plan, kept the fullest notes of the 1787 Convention, and later served two terms as president from 1809.
Q 14The Twenty-first Amendment of 1933 is unique in US history for what reason?
It repealed an earlier one
It repealed an earlier one, the Eighteenth, ending Prohibition; it is also the only amendment ratified by state conventions, chosen to bypass legislatures thought to be in fear of the temperance lobby.
Q 15Which is the only US state whose private law is based on civil law rather than English common law?
Louisiana
Louisiana's civil code descends from the civil law of its colonial rulers, so its lawyers start from a written code where other states start from past rulings.
Q 16Which of these countries has a legal system based on English common law?
India
India kept the common law after British rule ended, while Egypt and Iraq, both once under British control too, have mixed systems built on civil-law codes.
Q 17Which English king, the foe of Thomas Becket, sent out travelling royal judges and so founded the common law?
Henry II
Henry II sent royal justices round the country on circuit, and the rulings they shared, in place of local custom, grew into a law common to the whole of England.
Q 18Which English king was forced by rebel barons to seal Magna Carta at Runnymede?
John
John sealed it in June 1215 to buy peace with his barons, then appealed to the Pope, who annulled it within weeks, and civil war followed.
Q 19Which institution holds two of the four surviving 1215 originals of Magna Carta?
The British Library
The British Library has two; the others belong to Salisbury and Lincoln cathedrals, and Lincoln's spent part of the Second World War locked in Fort Knox.
Q 20The basalt stele carved with Hammurabi's law code is displayed in which museum?
The Louvre
The Louvre: a French expedition dug the stele up in 1901 at Susa in Iran, where it had been carried off as plunder some 600 years after it was carved.
Corrupting the youth: asked to propose his own penalty, Socrates, in Plato's telling, suggested free meals for life at public expense, and the jury of some 500 Athenians chose death.
Q 24None of those condemned in the Salem witch trials were burned at the stake; how were nineteen executed?
By hanging
By hanging: fourteen women and five men went to the gallows in 1692, while Giles Corey, who refused to enter a plea, was pressed to death under heavy stones.
Q 25The 1925 Scopes 'Monkey Trial' pitted Clarence Darrow for the defence against which famous prosecutor?
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential nominee, joined the prosecution, let Darrow call him to the stand as a Bible expert, and died in his sleep five days after the trial ended.
Q 26Which lawyer told the O. J. Simpson jury 'If it doesn't fit, you must acquit'?
Johnnie Cochran
Johnnie Cochran delivered the line in closing; Simpson was acquitted on 3 October 1995, and a civil jury found him liable in February 1997.
Q 27In which German city did the Palace of Justice host the trial of leading Nazis in 1945-46?
Nuremberg
Nuremberg: its courthouse had survived the bombing largely intact with a prison attached, and the city of the Nazi party rallies made a pointed setting.
Q 28The UN's International Court of Justice sits in which building?
The Peace Palace in The Hague
The Peace Palace in The Hague, paid for by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, opened in 1913, a year before the First World War; the court is the only principal UN organ not based in New York.
Q 29The 15 judges of the International Court of Justice are elected by the UN General Assembly and which other body?
The Security Council
The Security Council: a candidate needs a majority in both bodies voting separately, which is how Britain lost its seat in 2017 for the first time since the court began.
Q 30What was the traditional number of jurors in England?
Twelve
Twelve jurors has been the English norm since the Middle Ages; Scotland uses larger criminal juries, and Williams v. Florida (1970) let US states use six.