Many sources give conjecture as to the actual laws of the Yassa. Much of the Yassa was so influential that other cultures appropriated and adapted them, or reworked them for ends of negative propaganda. (For instance, the number of offenses for which the death penalty was given was famous among contemporaries of the Yassa.) However, as an example, here given is a list of possible laws, from a foreign source (paraphrased and quoted from Harold Lamb's Genghis Khan: The Emperor of All Men, Garden City Publishing, 1927):
1. There is one absolute God.
2. There are no taxes for religious leaders, doctors, or undertakers.
3. Emperors must be elected by the Mongol nobles.
4. Subjects cannot hold honorary titles.
5. Wars are all absolute (i.e. no treaties before absolute surrender).
6. Law about army organization.
7. Each soldier gets his weapons from his officer before battle and will be subject to inspection.
8. Pillaging may happen only after the general commands; all soldiers and officers are equal in their chances; a part must be paid to the emperor. Offenders get the death penalty.
9. Law of battues. Also, no one can kill any game from March to October.
10. Animals killed for food must be killed by having their hearts torn out.
11. Blood and entrails of animals can now be eaten.
12. (A list of privileges and immunities granted the officers of the empire.)
13. Those who are not soldiers serve the empire otherwise, without pay.
14. Thieves of a horse or steer will be killed and cut in half. Lesser theft is punished by 7-700 blows, or the fine of nine times the object's value.
15. Mongols may not be servants or slaves. All Mongols are soldiers, except in extreme cases.
16. Law against aiding an escaped slave, under pain of death.
17. Laws of marriage, including designating the children of the first wife as heirs, granting children by slaves the same rights as those by wives, and designating wives as the caretakers and traders of property, since men are to be occupied only with hunting and war.
18. Adulterers earn death sentences, which can be carried out by anyone at any time, without trial.
19. Marriage contracts are allowed for alliance purposes even when the children are very young or dead.
20. No washing of clothes or bathing during thunderstorms.
21. "Spies, false witnesses, all men given to infamous vices, and sorcerers are condemned to death."
22. Death penalty for ineffective or disobedient officers of the Khan; lesser offences mean a trial before the Khan.
