Memorizing Austrian/EU constitutional law verbatim: A hubristic journaling project

[turducken]

Hello everyone,

following my recent post regarding Bruno and verbatim memorization of law, I’ve resolved myself to learn the most important documents of Austrian constitutional law word-for-word. There are over five hundred such documents (I hear there were about 1200+ before the reforms of 2007) but I will be focusing on the three most prominent:

1. The “Basic Law on the General Rights of Nationals” of 1867
2. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to the exclusion of its additional protocols
3. The ‘Austrian Constitution’ (‘B-VG’) of 1920.

These are listed here in order of length and complexity, ranging from 20 very short articles to the massive B-VG at about 200 Articles and 40.000 words. This is also the order by which I will memorise them, aiming to increase my skill in verbatim memorisation in tandem with the difficulty of the material. Working on the two texts containing most of the basic rights first will also be the most beneficial option if I lose steam along the way, as I have a constitutional law exam still on the way. This exercise is also a means for me to pass the time at my summer job by reviewing, as it involves a lot of time waiting or walking around.

I will first write down the first letter of each word in a given sentence, then try recalling the sentence just be reading those letters, then try to recall it freely just like Nelson Dellis demonstrates here. I will then utilize memoria verborum to store images depicting the key words and phrases (which the step before will help me determine). I have begun to create a PAO for the most common words and phrases as they come up. So for ‘constitution’ or ‘constitutional’ that’d be ‘Alexander Hamilton/writing on or with/his quill’, for ‘Republic’ it would be ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi/slicing with/his lightsaber’. The first Loci of a new Article is always joined by one of the Persons from my 99 Numbers PAO. To give the (uncommonly simple) example of Article 2, Section 1, Sentence 1 of the ECHR which I memorised today (I’ll continue with the Basic Law of 1867 tomorrow now that I have the plan laid out here):

Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law.

Number 02 (Batman) is at the first locus (Beginning of Section 1) of Article 2 along with Paul Atreides (Person for ‘Right’, as he is the ‘rightful heir’ in his movies). Batman tries to stab him with a knife, but Paul protects himself by holding the clay tablets of the Ten Commandments (Object for ‘Law’, the Person would be Moses, the action ‘hefting it above his head’) in the way of the stab.

Unforunately, I have not yet discovered a method of cleanly demarcating where one section ends and another begins. That will have to come with repetition I suppose.

Speaking of which, I will lastly use Anki for spaced repetition of the individual sections of the artices. My goal (and I’m spitballing here based off the first 5 Articles of the ECHR) would be to memorise 30-40 lines of text per day. Please note the distinction between lines and sentences as the latter can be rather long and complex in (especially german) Legalese. I will also leave out certain sections of laws to be memorised later in dedicated (nested) palaces (though with placeholders in the ‘main’ palace to be linked from later) such as Articles 10-15 of the B-VG which are mostly just very long lists disambugating the division of legal and administrative powers concerning certain fields of law between the federal states and the republic.

It is unlikely I’ll be able to memorise all of the B-VG by the time the next semester starts, but I consider it a worthwhile exercise nonetheless. I look forward to seeing what kind of trainwreck this will become.

Best regards,
Turducken

[turducken]

--------- Day 1 ----------
I’ve managed to finish the Basic Law already since Articles 1, 19 and 20 are no longer valid law and therefore not included in most codices, leaving me with only 19 Articles. I was pleasantly surprised to discover how well this played into my strategy of demarcating the start of a given article with the corresponding person from my 99 PAO, as the article numbers wouldn’t be falsified by me simply counting the amount of articles I memorized, eg since Batman (02) is at the locus for article 02 I won’t accidentaly think it’s article 1.

I used Midra’s Manse from Elden Ring as a palace, which gave me just enough space as I ended up placing Articles 17a and 18 right in the boss room.

The longest single sentence I had to memorize today was article 15, which took me five loci:

Every Church and religious society recognized by the law has the right to joint public religious practice, arranges and administers its internal affairs autonomously, and retains possession and enjoyment of its institutions, endowments and funds devoted to worship, instruction and welfare, but is like every society subject to the general laws of the land.

This is of course the english translation, (courtesy of amnesty international) but it is faithful to the (lack of) segmentation and general vibe of the german original. It feels both odd and rewarding to jump to and decode that many loci for this one run-on-sentence. Seeing as these are the norm for the ECHR and B-VG, I might have to get used to it in lieu of finding a more ‘compact’ method. I believe Joe Reddington wrote something about incorporating linked lists into your memory palace, so I’ll need to have (yet) another look at his book when I find the time.

As laid out previously, I’ll continue with the ECHR tomorrow, which I’ve already started to memorise within Elden Ring’s Shadow Keep dungeon.

[turducken]

--------- Day 2 ---------

Lots of stuff to do today so I mostly focused on repetition and refining the images. I did wind up quickly flipping through Joe Reddington’s book again, which gave me the idea of linking together the images of the several loci used for longer sentences. So a character from loci #2 may shoot a character from loci #1, which I used for Article 5 Section 1 lit c of the ECHR and which worked out quite nicely since one of the words I wanted to memorize was ‘der Betreffende’ (the Affected) and ‘treffen’ also means ‘to hit’.

Today’s longest sentence was from Article 6 Section 1 and filled three loci:

Judgment shall be pronounced publicly but the press and public may be excluded from all or part of the trial in the interests of morals, public order or national security in a democratic society, where the interests of juveniles or the protection of the private life of the parties so require, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice.

Quite a doozy to recall, that one. I believe it may be the second-longest sentence in the entire document right after this one from Article 10:

The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

But since this one is just a straight-up list is should pose less of a challenge than the one mentioned previously. I probably won’t memorize anything tomorrow since its a free day for me, but I’ll review a bit.

[joereddington]

@turducken

which I’ve already started to memorise within Elden Ring’s Shadow Keep dungeon.

I’m interested in your general experiences using virtual worlds. I keep thinking I’ll use one and then it never quite works for me

[turducken]

Good question! For a short answer: I use ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ palaces for different use cases. For me, virtual worlds have key characteristics:

1. Very large palaces: The levels can be quite intricate so it’s easy to get up to several hundred loci. I believe the entire Shadow Keep would wind up with something like 400-600 loci when fully mapped, which fits well with the sort of information I’m trying to store here. You could probably build a fully continuous memory palace from one of the previous games like Dark Souls III and wind up with several thousand loci that way, but since I haven’t quite finished those and Elden Ring is open world I’m just using these dungeons.

2. Less visual clutter: When using a public space like a supermarket or library, there will inevitably be a myriad of people and items there, which may prevent you from seeing the environment as clearly as when using virtual palaces. For example, if I’m in a bookstore I don’t really know what contents of the shelves look like, resulting in a vaguely defined blob of ‘book’. Of course, one could try to simply imagine the shelves empty, but that’s still a step more than you’d usually need for a virtual palace.

3. I find virtual palaces easier to ‘morph’ in order to fit my needs. For example, when memorising Article 4, Section 3 of the ECHR there are four items to memorise but the room I was about to enter would normally only fit three loci. I solved this by ‘stretching’ a windowsill out so the two people in the image i needed could fit on it. This helps to structure the kind of information I’m trying to store here, since it isn’t ‘a straight line’ like a deck of cards or lecture notes, but rather like a tree branch with twigs sprouting and subdividing along its length.

That is why I tend to use virtual palaces for large projects with tons of subdivisions while reserving real ones for more linear or wholly unordered information such as names or vocabulary.

As for making it work for you: It is best to choose games with a large focus on the environment and sections you’d probably run through more than once. So games like Hitman or Elden Ring are ideal (though Hitman is probably slightly better at providing proper lighting than the dark environments of ER) while something like the Devil May Cry series isn’t.

[turducken]

--------- Days 3 and 4 ---------
As stated, only a bit of review on Day 3 as it was my free day. Today, I memorized Articles 7 through 14 of the ECHR, meaning I now have all subjective constitutional rights memorized verbatim save for what’s included in Article of the 7 B-VG. Feels good to reach a milestone.

The extremely long sentence from Article 10 I mentioned previously wound up covering 10 loci. For anyone curious about the physical dimensions, I am now somewhere around the area with the flaming boats and the fire knight after the ‘Storehouse third floor’ site of grace, though I should mention that I’ve modified the place somewhat. For example, there is a sentence in Article 10 Section 1 which reads ‘This right includes XYZ’, but with the german translation of include being ‘schließt… ein’ the sentence becomes something like ‘This right [schließt] XYZ [ein]’. As you can imagine, the verb being parted like this becomes rather inconvenient when XYZ takes up four loci. To solve this, I wound up taking advantage of the malleability I described in my response to @joereddington’s question and ‘morphed’ a prison cell into the palace containing the four loci needed. At its gate is Paul Atreides (my image for ‘Right’ as previously mentioned), who locks the prison door with a comically large key, since ‘schließt ein’ can also mean ‘to lock in’ or ‘to imprison’. So when decoding the sentence, I pass by Paul on both my way into and out of the prison cell, reminding me of the lingering ‘ein’.

One more problem I believe I have found a solution to (after sort of creating it in the first place) is the Beginning of certain sentences proclaiming something to be a right, in both the StGG and the ECHR. They start with either ‘Nobody’, ‘Everybody’, ‘Every Human’ or ‘Every Citizen’, but I haven’t included them in my images as of yet because I didn’t want to memorize ‘nobody’ x times in a row. Of course, this is a possible source for mistakes while decoding. However, I plan to amend this by going back through the palaces and dyeing the person(s) in the affected images a certain colour: Flaming Red for ‘Nobody’, Neon Green for ‘Everybody’, etc.

One more possible problem would be negatives, such as a ‘This article does not exclude’ from Article 10. Perhaps some sort of affect, like the subject being covered in oil or some other substance or having them perform a particular action in reverse could be a solution? For today, I simply solved it by having the person in question open a padlock since it was the locus right after the one with Paul Atreides mentioned previously, since exclusion is the opposite of inclusion and so it made sense to make their encodings analogous as well. I should probably get some sort of fixed system for that.

Now let’s see how much I remember tomorrow. Best regards,

Turducken

[turducken]

Busy day today, wound up memorizing articles 15+16 and implementing the colour strategy mentioned above. I am pleased to report that Scrooge McDuck now wears a green coat.

[turducken]

Finished up the rest of part one of the ECHR today, which should put me at 1900 words of that document memorized. SInce the rest of the convention concerns itself with the inner workings of the European Court of Human Rights and is therefore not terribly important to my upcoming exams I’m considering whether or not to switch over to memorizing the B-VG for now. I’ll probably be using Hitman III’s Mendoza level for that one.

[turducken]

Today, I committed to memorizing the first five articles of the B-VG within the Mendoza level, a small snapshot of which I’ve appended below (copied from a Polygon article). The actual level is of course far larger, including various fields, guard posts and underground areas. As you can see, there is much more space and light than in the relatively dark and cramped Shadow Keep, though this isn’t ideal in some areas like the lower balcony, which leaves a lot of empty space (the umbrellas will hardly be suitable pegs). I’ll need to adapt it accordingly, perhaps by ‘lowering’ the floor down so it forms an ampitheater/colloseum-like structure subdivided by stairs and areas similar to Giulio Camillo’s memory theatre, a strategy which I’ve used in various variations in the past, and to great effect (though of course without Camillo’s rigid categorisation and hermetic influences). In a sense, I’m doing the mnemonist’s version of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Today’s challenge was trying to find an image for ‘Zwischenzolllinien’, which would be customs lines within the continuous territory of the federal republic. I wound up having the In-Betweener (Marvel Comics (notice a theme?)), as ‘Zwischen’ means inbetween, drawing a line, ‘linie’, onto a Flatscreen TV, as TVs are usually the only thing advertised in ‘Zoll’ (=Inch) measurements here in Austria.

The continual historic novation of the B-VG will unfortunately inevitably result in me having to grapple with extremely close yet similar Words for the same concept where a more ‘static’ piece of legislature such as the ECHR or the StGG were more uniform. For example, there is ’ Bund’ (Federal Republic) and ‘Bundesgebiet’ (=Territory of the Federal Republic) yet Article 4 Section one uses ‘Within the Bund’ as a territorial marker instead of using it in an organisational sense like the rest of the Document or using ‘Bundesgebiet’. Similarly, Article 3, Section 1 mentions Federal States (‘Bundesländer’) while Section 2 refers to them as just ‘States’ (in this instance, I tried to solve for this by having my Person for ‘State’ be bound (‘gebunden’, which includes ‘Bund’) with some rope. Not sure if it would be more ideal to keep doing the rope bit or add yet more Instances to my ever-growing PAO word list.)

Never thought I’d be spending any part of my friday nights memorizing the constitution, but I have work tomorrow so here we are. Could be worse I suppose

[Vini_Villela (Vinícius Villela Cuan)]

Quite a pleasure reading your logs. I did some memorization of International Law, but I didn’t do it verbatim. I was surprised to see that you used, for example, only 5 loci to memorize the article 15 on your first day. How did you crammed so much text in such a sparse number of loci? I saw that you used that first letter technique to get yourself familiarized with the text first, but if you could give an example I would be very grateful, since I don’t know how after some time the effects of doing the first letter thingy would help you remember so much after a while with only key words to trigger all the rest. All the best for your endeavors!

[turducken]

@Vini_Villela sure, here’s how I memorized Article 15 (keep in mind that the sentence structure differs in my german version):

Every Church and religious society recognized by the law

I see the priest from my home town (‘church’) wearing the makeup of heath ledger’s joker (‘(religious) society’). Starfire (Number 15) is there, draping a medal around his neck with one hand (‘recognized’) whilst carrying the fainly glowing tablet of the ten commandments (‘law’) in the other. The priest carries a Jaguar in his arms, which clues me in on the sentence starting with a ‘je’ sound ('Jede, meaning ‘every’).

has the right to joint public religious practice,

Paul Atreides (‘Right’) and JFK (‘public’) kneel on the floor, their hands clasped in prayer (‘joint religious practice’). If I were memorizing the english version I’d probably have one or both of them smoke a ‘joint’ to remember that word.

arranges and administers its internal affairs autonomously,

Doctor Fate (‘arranges’, since the german word is ‘ordnet’, which can also be translated as ‘orders’ and he is a Lord of Order) mixes chemicals on a laboratory table (‘administers’, the action is that of Walter White, since the german word is ‘verwaltet’). Inside one of the flasks is the disembodied head of Glen Quagmire, making his signature ‘Giggity’ sound (‘internal affairs’).

and retains possession and enjoyment of its institutions, endowments and funds devoted to worship, instruction and welfare,

The sentence structure in this is a little different from the german, as you’ll see: Mr Burns (possession) raises his spoon (enjoyment, since the german ‘Genuss’ has a culinary aspect to it) to find before him a marble pillar (‘worship’, ‘Cultus’ in german which is close to ‘Kultur’ (Culture)) with a small old-timey blackboard hanging from it (‘instruction’). The top of the pillar is hollowed out and contains piping-hot fondue (‘funds’, ‘Fonds’ in german), of which he takes a hearty bite, rubbing his belly afterward (welfare, since ‘wohltätig’ → Wohltat, sometimes used to demarkate delicious and filling food). Beside him is the Mad Hatter in a restraining jacket (‘institutions’, since the german ‘Anstalten’ also means ‘madhouse’) holding a pen in his mouth (‘endowments’, since ‘Stiftungen’ contains ‘Stift’, meaning ‘pen’), which he proceeds to dip into the afforementioned fondue (‘funds’).

but is like every society subject to the general laws of the land.

Heath Ledger’s Joker (‘society’) bends the knee (‘subject’) to Cicero (‘land’, the german being ‘Staat’ which is closer to ‘state’ for which he is my person) who is holding up the tablet of the ten commandments (‘laws’, as seen in image one) while there is an electic eel wrapped around his arms and shocking him (general, since the first syllable of ‘allgemein’ sounds like ‘Aal’, meaning ‘Eel’).

And that’s how you memorize Article 15 in five neat little packages

Now the first letter technique is mostly there to get you familiar with the rhythm of the sentence and smaller sentence fragments. The heavy lifting of memorisation is done by the method of loci and spaced repetition, the first letters just help you get familiar with what’s in between the keywords. I also like to gesticulate a lot while reviewing. Hope this helps!

[Vini_Villela (Vinícius Villela Cuan)]

Thank you very much, especially for bringing with your explanations some German words semantics, that as a learner of the language made me appreciate your response twofold. Quagmire’s head made me giggle and a very educated choice in making Cicero as your representation of State. And again, my best offerings to your endeavors.

[turducken]

Your response motivated me to get back into the fray of memorizing, as I’d been more focused on my exams lately. I immediately found a new longest sentence, taking me a whopping 15 loci to memorize:

In the matters of holding the election of the Federal President, elections for the general representative bodies and the European Parliament, the election of the mayor by those entitled to elect the municipal council, in the matters of holding popular initiatives, referenda and consultations of the people as provided by the federal constitution or the constitution of a province as well as in matters of the direct participation of those entitled to elect the municipal council in handling the matters of the own sphere of competence of the municipality, for the duration of a detention or arrest in the sense of the Federal Constitutional Law, Federal Law Gazette No. 684/1988, the last residences outside the place of the arrest or detention and the last main residence outside the place of the arrest or detention that a person had before the arrest or detention are deemed to be the residences or the main residence, respectively, of the person arrested or detained.

First of all congratulations if you made it through that sentence without falling asleep or developing a spontaneous aneurysm halfway through. Second, encoding efficiency sure can vary greatly. I managed to squeeze 22 words in one particular loci when memorizing the ECHR but here I’m barely averaging 9 words (or 11.5 if you use the English translation, as nouns are commonly compounded in German). Though I should add that my encoding tactics are more detailed now, encoding small grammatical flourishes like ‘as well as’.

[beau2am]

@turducken

Though I should add that my encoding tactics are more detailed now, encoding small grammatical flourishes like ‘as well as’.

I relate to this.

Also:
ass well ass

[Vini_Villela (Vinícius Villela Cuan)]

Oh, my skin has been hardened by a lot of gruesome law, so it is going to take a little bit more to take me down! Nonetheless, that is quite a behemoth, and I send my respects to you. To memorize such a thing verbatim, one has to have a soul not of any trinket material. It is not a paragraph, but a unloading machine gun, without points. A fat sentence if I ever saw one.

[HadrianusStephanus (Adrián URACS)]

I’ve just finished reading the whole thread. Really amazing and once again, very similar (but much better) to my method of studying !
Using celebrities instead of words is really great, putting them on the Loci is awesome. Just two questions :
-Would you be kind enough to update us on your studies and the mid-term effect it has on your memory, 1 month after you’ve started ?
-Would you be able to answer - without thinking - if I would ask “What is article 22 of the Basic Law” ? In other words, did you integrate article numbers into your associations ?(maybe you already answered, but I missed this detail)

[turducken]

I’m afraid I haven’t memorized all that much since my last update, as life has been terribly busy for me lately (but not in a bad way) and since I have exams coming up.

That being said, I do think I benefit from memory techniques even when not actively using them. I seem to remember much more after doing my ‘morning jog’ (a deck of cards or 108 digits).

I did integrate article numbers by placing the people from my PAO at the start of each. So for ‘Article 22’ I’d ask myself ‘where in this palace have I seen Kyle Rayner?’, which gives me the first locus of the article.

[Biondi1789]

You are doing this for pleasure? . Or you need verbatim for the exam?

[Biondi1789]

You could remember the number with repetition. I write it. Or with mnemonics like images. Major. Or link method.

[turducken]

No, I did this just to challenge myself a little. We don’t have to know everything verbatim.