Democratic law in classical Athens is the latest product of M. Gagarin’s long engagement with Athenian law and oratory. As the introduction states, the book aims to contribute to the ongoing scholarship on the effectiveness of the Athenian judicial system. Although this is not the first attempt of a scholar to defend the Athenian legal system against the usual negative assessments—based on the typical argument about Athens’ lack of legal experts—, what makes Gagarin’s work stand out is his position in relation to the existing landscape. Two scholarly camps exist in the study of Athenian law: one has tended to privilege extra-judicial aspects of the Athenian judicial system, such as social or political worth; the other has tended to favor ‘rule-of-law’ behavior—the assessment of legal actions according to their description in the Athenian law code. Although Gagarin admits the validity of each camp’s position, he thinks neither of these groups fully describes the situation in ancient Athens and seeks instead to surmount their disagreements by presenting eight special features of the Athenian trial.