Modern people work in massive factories or offices for remotely managed corporations and need protection in their capacity as employees. Instead of locally made or distributed products, they buy mass market goods manufactured hundreds or thousands of miles away and need protection in their capacity as consumers. And as industrial production expands, bringing unquestionable benefits, it also pollutes our air and water; thus, people need protection as denizens of the environment. Only regulatory agencies can meet these needs. The populace has insistently, although sometimes reluctantly, demanded the creation and expansion of these agencies. The result is that the US national legal system is now primarily administrative or regulatory. Common law and judicial enforcement remain important, but they have been demoted to a secondary role. American educators have never acknowledged this transformation of the legal system. But by emphasizing common law, and even constitutional law, to the exclusion of regulatory and administrative law is misrepresentation, not education. It fails to teach students the basic realities of the legal system. In this article, Edward Rubin discusses the origin of the three-branch model of government and explains why this model is no longer an accurate metaphor for the nation's government. He concludes by offering suggestions on how teachers can start the task of introducing students to the country's modern governmental tree.