Reason's Volokh blog has turned legal language into a quiz. A short post titled "Beasts of the Law" presents three blank-filled phrases from judicial writing: "A red ___ case," "Presumptions may be looked on as the ___ of the law," and "Judges are not like ___." Readers are asked to identify the missing animal and give the explanation courts have offered for each phrase.
The quiz is deliberately strict. It is not enough to pick an animal that fits the sentence; the phrase must already exist in legal speech. As the post notes, judges are not like eels, but that alone would not count as an answer.
Because there is only one source, there is no disagreement to compare. The post is less an explainer than an invitation: a reminder that animal imagery has long been part of how judges talk, and that recognizing those phrases is a way of reading the law closely.