(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best general administrative law books

>Examples?

Grant. Taylor. Arthur. Hoover. Arguably Ike (though he is probably the most successful). With the exception of one term as Governor which is well outside of Washington experience that is at the core of it, Bush (2nd).

>Nope. Just not needlessly meddling in places we have nothing to gain from.

Arguable. There is plenty the US can gain from in maintaining global hegemony. Not much that I particularly agree with, but there are benefits. One doesn't need to read much further than Keohane and Nye's work on neoliberal institutionism to see that. However, for me as someone on the opposite side of Trump's political beliefs, I will take an isolationist over a warhawk.

>You're insane if you believe this.

When did I write: "trump will be less effective with the republican senate/congress than Clinton"? You put that in quotes, but I never wrote those words that you're responding to.

As much as people see Obama as having been "stonewalled", he has done more than the vast majority of presidents. When we get beyond our perception of what a president does and looks at the amount of legislation he was able to put through, policies to get enacted, etc., Obama has been amazingly successful at it.

Lastly, whoever wins the Presidency on their first term will, the vast majority of the time, win the house and the senate. It is called the coattails effect. Then, in the mid-term elections, the opposition to the president are the only ones enthused to vote, so it tends to go to the opposition until the second presidential election. Sometimes it bounces back, sometimes it doesn't. It only gets worse on the 2nd mid-term, then finally restarts with a new president.

That's far from a 100% assurance, but that is the trend.

Check out Neustadt on the way the presidency works. It is pretty much the foundational work in the field. And in regards to presidents being able to act with opposition in the legislation, check out Krehbiel. The two together do a pretty good job of describing the way in which a president is able to do things when the opposition controls the legislature, but why it tends to fail for those without a strong political background.

My mother, Roberta Gellis, wrote a four-part fantasy series with Lackey, and some other fantasies, and some medieval mysteries and medieval romances (which is sort of like fantasy but with real history and no magic). Here are links to her pages on publishers' sites...

http://www.baen.com/catalog/category/view/s/roberta-gellis/id/1739/

http://www.belgravehouse.com/online/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1012_1063

https://www.audible.com/author/Roberta-Gellis/B000AQ38HG

I hope this helps.

Also, as far as the non-fiction goes, I am NOT an expert in this field, but I did a little checking and I found a few things...

https://www.amazon.com/Immigrant-Success-Planning-Family-Resource/dp/177141023X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1525813966&sr=8-2&keywords=legal+resources+refugees \<-- meant more for the refugees, I think, but a useful checklist of things you may need to discuss with people

https://www.amazon.com/There-Goes-Neighborhood-Communities-Immigration/dp/1633883078/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1525813504&sr=8-15&keywords=american+law+refugees \<-- looks like it may be useful

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0826126685/ref=rdr_ext_tmb \<-- it looks like the profession most closely associated with what you described is social work, although it may not be called that, so this book may be helpful

Related to that, check out https://www.socialworkers.org/ \<-- why read a book when you can just find some experts and ask them a question? Yes, they'll talk to you. This is what they do for a living.

https://socialworklicensure.org/resources/social-work-organizations/ \<-- ditto

Again, I hope this helps. Thanks for trying to help other people. “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” —Aesop.

I agree with some of the points you've made. However, I think you're forgetting that businesses exist SOLELY to create profit for themselves and their shareholders. Everything else is, at best, secondary. This includes safety standards, equal opportunity laws, non-discrimination policies, public relations, child labor laws, ensuring a 2 day weekend, hours workable per week, overtime policies, etc. You say that people and watch dog groups can prevent these things from happening but many of the Federal Departments that currently regulate these things were originally created from public outrage. If the people alone had the power to enforce these things on their own why would there be a need for these institutions to be created in the first place? These departments responsible for regulating specific industries are an extension of our Constitutional Republic government. Considering the fact that most people have basic necessities they need to cover like putting food on the table, house payments, children, car payments, utilities, etc. Most people can't afford the luxury of protesting for any prolonged period of time. This is why these institutions exist, people vote others into positions where it is their job to worry about these things so the public can go back to being productive members of society. These departments that regulate are by definition an example of our Republic-based government working how it should. If citizens had to spend every waking moment trying to fend off everything bad that companies were trying to do in a regulation-less world people would give up after a while. Eventually you have to go home, go back to work, and go back to your regular life.

Just for the sake of argument let's run a hypothetical on what would happen if some current regulations ceased to exist.

1. Your food would no longer be regulated by the FDA. This means no more mandatory quality inspections on food and liquid drink products. Why would a corporation spend more money hiring quality assurance inspectors or setting up departments and policy guidelines for food inspection for their food if there is no enforcement or incentive to do so? Logically, they could just cut the price of the food since they saved money on not having to regulate their products and position it as a benefit to the customer because you save money on the food. If public outcry gets bad enough about the quality of the food, companies could simply make their own internal Quality Assurance departments and then heavily mark up the price on the inspected food to compensate. Since there's no regulation their definition of "quality inspected" food could mean anything. They don't have to disclose the foods contents on labels anymore without regulation. I mean a company could use unsafe coloring techniques or pump their food with unregulated chemicals in unrestricted amounts for the sake of making their food look more presentable. How much of what is in your food is no longer known. Deathly allergic to specific types of food? Sorry you have to pay a mark up price for that since it costs us money to make alternative products that don't have those specific things in them. You could very realistically end up with ground up bugs in your food and drinks since pesticides are expensive and it would be more profitable not to spend the money on something you're not required to do. Ever accidentally gotten shower water in your mouth? Or used the bathroom faucet to wash your face or swish your mouth out after brushing your teeth? Your local water company might be cutting corners too on water filters and other internal processes since utilities can now be competitive without regulation.
   
   
2. Media content would be an entirely different landscape without regulation. No more FCC to monitor programming. Shows can now run themes and topics of any kind. Anything ranging from blatant nudity to child pornography broadcasts. Anyone with basic equipment and the ability to broadcast can now essentially make a show about anything they want. And even if companies had to maintain a public image and regulated their own broadcasting, ad space would still be an issue. Even if we give some broadcasting corporations the benefit of the doubt and we assume some of them self regulated their content you could, hypothetically, still have insanely inappropriate ad's pop up on your TV because they bought the ad space and they can advertise whatever they want to without regulation. Broadcasting companies would still exist to make profit and so any company with the right amount of money can get the ad space they need, regardless of their advertised content. The most interesting thing about deregulation in the media sector is that Japan is a pretty good example of what lax broadcasting regulation looks like.
   
   
3. All types of transportation would change dramatically. No more seat belts, hazard lights, turn signals, bumpers, airbags, etc. The car manufacturing companies would not be required to include them. They would be "Luxury" features. Cheaper cars would be put for sale with bare-bones features with the attraction of being better bang for your buck. You save money on buying a cheaper car but you sacrifice things in return. If public outcry gets bad enough, just re-add those features but use the cheapest materials possible to save money. Now you have issues where airbags didn't deploy in crashes, brakes failures, seat belts didn't hold and tore right through on impact, etc. Unless of course you have the money for that fancy car with them fancy top of the line turny blinky majiggers then you're not in such a bad position. Also no more traffic regulation would be required. Certain cities and municipalities could create their own standards for driving because cities, like businesses, also have budgets they need to maintain. So to save a few bucks City A chooses to make their entire city use stop signs for all of their roads (except highway and freeways) instead of expensive lights that require installation, maintenance, and electricity to maintain. City B however chooses to install round-a-bout systems all throughout their city as a cheap solution to traffic regulation since the city has a pretty good connection to local cementing companies. You would get tons and tons of individual cities doing these things in unique ways beneficial to each city but at the end of the day it would all only add more confusion for anyone that has to do out of city or out of state travel. Accidents as well as fatalities would likely go up as well. Without regulation people would also be free to not buy car insurance if they didn't want to. Truck divers and other driving intensive positions would no longer be required to have specific licences. Also emergency response times go up since there is no more traffic regulation forcing people to move over to the side of the road or Traffic signal preemption that helps reduce response times for Emergency Responders. Lack of regulation also would not only apply to cars but also to trains, planes, boats, etc. No more life jacket requirements, drinking and driving boats is fine, no more mandatory maintenance on personally owned single engine planes, air space regulation, etc.
   
   
4. Employers no longer have regulations either. Work weeks can be whatever your bosses make them to be. You could work 10, 12, or 16 hour shifts and if you don't like it you get the boot and there goes your car payments, mortgage payments, etc. Work weeks no longer have to be 40 hours either. Also no more overtime. No more company sponsored insurance since it costs the company quite a lot to maintain their insurance policies. Child labor laws no longer exist. Rambunctious young children wanting to make some money no longer have to do basic jobs like walking dogs, lemonade stands, etc. Companies can hire kids to push mail carts around or other basic clerical duties or even physical labor. No more sick time, vacation time, holiday pay, etc.
   
   
5. No more FDA means no more drug regulation. Walgreen's now sells EVERYTHING over the counter. Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, Morphine, Adderall, Xanax, etc. Prescriptions are no longer required to buy the medication you want. This works out in Pharmaceutical companies favor since they can make way more money opening up their entire repertoire of drugs instead of only a select few OTC medications. Also the contents of what is in those drugs, recommended dosage amounts, expiration dates, etc all that is gone. Just blank generic bottles with basic labels. Save money on not having to print all of that information on each individual product.
   
   Again, this is all hypothetical but regulations are actually extremely beneficial considering our current form of government. The idea that everything will just work itself out is naive. Are all regulations good? No. Do some regulations impede companies and peoples ability to innovate? Yes. But the trade offs of having these agencies far outweighs any possible benefit gained by de-regulating everything. I personally believe that deregulation is something that falls more in line with Anarchism than anything else considering the mentality behind it stems from the belief that government is inherently bad. Either way it gets into semantics at that point and I'd rather not go there.
   
   Some good sources on the matter:
   
   Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"
   
   Susan E. Dudley's "Regulation: A Primer"
   
   Robert Baldwin's "Understanding Regulation"
   

Thank you for the in-depth clarification of your points. I really appreciate and learned from the specificity of your points about CPIs and other oversight committees. And it appears we agree broadly that the central questions are: what can these newly established mechanisms of accountability actually accomplish under their mandates? And also: what is their recent track record?

I find your contention that the answers are: not much, and not too good, respectively, to be pretty accurate.

Thinking about the recent protests and the widespread cynicism about government in Brazil, it seems to me that one important way in which things could be improved is if those civil society organizations and public agencies concerned with corruption, rights and social justice could be seen to mobilize legal instruments to promote these values.

Lawyers and judges don't do much to change society. In fact, they are usually interested in reinforcing the status quo. But they can have some impact when challenged by other social actors. As the recent experience of many extremely unequal countries like India, South Africa, Brazil, and Colombia show, the legal community can, in some circumstances, be responsive to the demands of the poor when they seek redress through the legal system. (http://www.amazon.ca/Courts-Social-Transformation-Democracies-Institutional/dp/0754647838)

And although legal institutions are also vulnerable to subversion by the powerful, when forced to, they can also trap the privileged, bringing then back to the realm of law.

After some reflection on your arguments, I have to say that I find your claim that there is a relatively strong causal chain linking corruption to an increase in homicides more persuasive than I did at first.

Simply put, it seems to me that one thing corruption can actually be shown to do in terms of data is undermine the rule of law. And there is a very strong statistical correlation between impunity and high incidence of homicide.

So thanks again for giving me something to chew on for a while.

May I ask which news outlet you work for? I have done some work with media organizations in Brazil over the years.

And just a quick word - in English, probably the closest translation to "Capitanias" would be "hereditary fiefs," which you got half of anyway.

The inquisitional legal system designed by napoleon used by most countries that didn't inherit their legal system from the British.

If you are interested in seeing just how bad out system is I would recommend reading

>Our Corrupt Legal System

by the brilliant Walkley Award-winning journalist Evan Whitton

>Whitton, who was a member of The Australian Media Hall of Fame, went on to win five Walkleys in total - in 1967, 1970, 1973, 1974 and 1975. In 1983 he was named the Melbourne Press Club's Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year for his coverage of the Street Royal Commission in NSW, also known as the Wran Royal Commission.

>In Melbourne, he uncovered allegations of police extortion at abortion clinics, coverage which led to the Kaye Inquiry and won him his 1970 Walkley Award.

>He left Truth for a brief stint at the Sunday Australian before joining Fairfax Media, first at the National Times as assistant editor and then editor, before moving to the Sydney Morning Herald as chief reporter in 1981.

>Known for his long-form, narrative journalism, Whitton dissected the Petrov Affair and the HMAS Voyager disaster, and also covered the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption in Queensland. He was also famous for his 26,000 word, three-part series on how Australia got into the Vietnam War.

>https://www.smh.com.au/national/walkley-award-winning-journalist-evan-whitton-dies-aged-90-20180717-p4zrvz.html

 

>Our Corrupt Legal System

>The lawyer-run adversary system used in Britain and its former colonies, including the US, India, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia does not try to find the truth. It is the only system which conceals evidence. 'Our Corrupt Legal System' explains why trial lawyers, famously economical with the truth, control evidence; civil hearings take weeks, months or years; in serious criminal cases, 24 anti-truth devices allow more than 50% of guilty accused to escape justice.

>By contrast, in the investigative system used in Europe and other countries, including Japan, trained judges control evidence and seek the truth; civil hearings take a few hours; 95% of guilty accused are convicted. It is the most widespread, accurate and cost-effective system. Russell Fox, an Australian judge who researched the law for 11 years, concluded: 'The public estimation must be correct, that justice marches with the truth.' The vast majority of voters will support change to a truthseeking system: trial lawyers are fewer than 0.2% of the population; the public are 99.8%. 'A masterpiece.' - Phillip Knightley, twice British Journalist of the Year.

 

Edit; The book is legally available for free as well


www.netk.net.au/whitton/ocls.pdf



>In a small nod to the public interest, the book can be downloaded free from netk.net.au/whitton/ocls.pdf, and extracts can be republished gratis. Also available from Amazon and books.google.com.au/ebooks.

>https://tasmaniantimes.com/2013/03/free-book-our-corrupt-legal-system-can-now-be-dowloaded-free/

I did above.

Essentially, the avoided costs because distributed PV is on the system add up to be more than the retail rate. In part, this is because marginal costs are higher than average costs. In part, this is because the infrastructure and variable costs associated with generating electricity during the day is higher than at night.

In practice, it requires a very careful, detailed study, with a number of other careful, detailed studies as inputs. The specifics of the utility, the neighboring utilities, the transmission grid, the load shape of the customers, local and regional environmental requirements, expected growth (or decline) of demand, and a variety of other factors affect the Value of Solar study findings.

Value of Solar can find the value to (a) the utility, or (b) society. Generally, the utility has to make decisions based on (a), but legislators make decisions based on (b). So, if net metering is set forth on a public policy basis, you get what you come up with -- "that the value to the country may exceed the retail rate for reasons such as energy independence." But, it's indeed possible that the VoS exceeds retail rate from the perspective of the utility.

> But the above explanation seems to ignore that utilities are businesses like any other

Electric utilities are not businesses like any other, for a few reasons. 1: they are franchises. They are chartered monopolies. Only one wires company. In exchange for having the monopoly, they both (a) have specific obligations that don't apply to other businesses, such as obligation to serve and minimum reliability requirements, and (b) have specific benefits that don't apply to other businesses, such as guaranteed rate of return on prudent investments. Additionally, 2 electric utilities are obligated to sell as much of their product as the customer wants, no matter what. It doesn't matter if the customer twice as much at 3pm as 3am, just like every other customer -- the utility has to have enough infrastructure to serve at 3pm even if that means a bunch of idle equipment at 3am. It has an obligation to serve. To exacerbate the challenge, for retail customers most utilities aren't allowed to charge more for their product at 3pm than at 3am, even though it costs them more to make it! There are few businesses who aren't allowed to increase price when costs go up in expected, season ways. And, 3, electric utilities cannot store their product. They can stock their raw inputs, but they simply cannot store kWh in a warehouse. Even energy storage isn't storing electricity -- bulk electric storage is pumped hydro, but they're storing hydroelectric potential energy; they have to convert that raw input into electricity again later, at the exact moment the customer asks for it, without any pre-agreed upon schedule.

Most electricity sales in tUSA are not from municipal owned utilities. Bonneville and TVA are the largest exceptions, Santee Cooper (SC) is probably third, the Nebraska Public Power authorities a collective fourth, and then there are a bunch of city-owned utilities. These represent maybe 10 percent of electric sales -- the rest come from Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs), which are regulated monopolistic private businesses.^1

Ratemaking for IOUs is done within the confines of the public utility commission (various names in the 49 states that have one).^2 There are a variety of ratemaking principles, first laid out clearly by Bonbright. These principles sometimes conflict with each other -- you want rates to accurately reflect costs, but you want rate structures to be simple. Now, here's the thing that blows the minds of many... utilities don't make any more money if they sell you another kWh of electricity. They don't make any money on variable costs like fuel, wages, or maintenance. They recoup the money they spent, but no more. Utilities make money by getting a defined rate of return on capital investments, typically about 10 percent. This means that utilities do make profits when they build stuff -- generators, new or upgraded wires, newly installed meters in your house, a new computer program to handle billing, even an office renovation. And, here's the crazy thing -- depending on the state, once the amount of money they're owed is determined, the regulators and utilities use forecased sales to determine how much money per kWh sold the utility will get, and never update the forecast! This means that utilities are ever overcollecting or undercollecting on every single investment they've made for which they're still collecting, depending on whether or not their 5-30 year forecasts are correct! Yeah, crazy. It means that sunk costs like investments already made aren't considered in future adjustments to rates. Now, with ratemaking in 49 states, things vary and this generalization has a variety of exceptions to it. The details matter. But ultimately, forward-going ratemaking, if done correctly, will ensure that the utility won't lose money from more distributed PV. They might not be able to make as much as they would have because a specific capital investment they would have gotten to make is no longer needed (and that's good!), but they'll still collect the revenue on existing investments. If the VoS exceeds retail rate, it results in a downward pressure on rates for all customers. If the VoS is less than retail rate, you get an upward pressure. In either case, it's an extremely small impact on non participants bills because the difference between VoS and retail rate is quite low, and because such a small percentage of customers (by sales) have PV. No government will need to step in.

-=-

fn 1. Some may observe that there is competitive electric supply in some places. That's true! Still, the wires company is a regulated monopoly who delivers electricity generated in a competitive wholesale marketplace, so many of the challenges and unique properties of electricity companies remain.

fn 2. PUCs generally don't have jurisdiction over munis. Because Nebraska is 100 percent public power, there is no PUC overseeing electric companies in NE.

Amazon seems to have a lot of recent books on the topic.

Family Trusts: A Guide for Beneficiaries, Trustees, Trust Protectors, and Trust Creators (2015)
https://www.amazon.com/Family-Trusts-Beneficiaries-Protectors-Bloomberg/dp/1119118263

Executor's Guide, The: Settling a Loved One's Estate or Trust (2018)
https://www.amazon.com/Executors-Guide-Settling-Loved-Estate/dp/1413324800

Trustee's Legal Companion, The: A Step-by-Step Guide to Administering a Living Trust (2017)
https://www.amazon.com/Trustees-Legal-Companion-Step-Step/dp/1413323650

Plan Your Estate (2018)
https://www.amazon.com/Plan-Estate-Denis-Clifford-Attorney/dp/1413325114

Every Californian's Guide To Estate Planning: Wills, Trust & Everything Else (2018)
https://www.amazon.com/Every-Californians-Guide-Estate-Planning/dp/1413324681

Thanks, looks useful. I was hoping there'd be something online, like this but for English law, but I guess that was being overly optimistic; nothing's free over here.

Looking more on Amazon, there seem to be 2 competing q&a series, Routledge and Oxford. Might pick between them depending on which seems better in each individual subject - e.g. for contracts I think I'm going to go for the Oxford one: their author is head of the Bristol Uni law dept, wheras Routledge's author is at "Lincoln Uni" (== Hull Polytechnic)..

Though I guess I'd not be losing much by trying one of each - you can get them practically free if you get one of the older versions second hand, and it's not like the law's changed much in the last couple of years in most subjects.

>1) Where can I read through all the British Laws?

If you started today, you'd be done by the time you were ready for retirement.

>How does everyone else go about knowing laws?

Generally, they don't. People apply common sense and count on that to get them through the day. Most of the time it does. Sometimes it doesn't.

If you want a general primer on laws, a good starting point would probably be to get an LPC study review book. Something like this one just a bit more up to date, preferably.

>2) What are articles? And consequently, are there other categories similar to them (acts perhaps?)

Acts are what you generally thing of as the law, i.e. the primary statutory instruments that sets out codified law.

Articles could mean a number of things, and doesn't have as clear meaning as acts do.

Yes, there are other categories. Regulations, for examples, are usually more detailed laws that are promulgated by government agencies with specific areas of authority, like city planning, etc.

The UK is a common law jurisdiction, which also means that the decisions of courts are law.

>3) So there're laws for the UK, but there are also EU laws?

Yes, correct. And until Brexit happens, EU law generally trumps UK law. (There's also disctinctions between the laws of the UK. England and Wales is generally one jurisdiction, Scotland another and Northern Ireland a third).

>Or treaties signed between countries?

Yes. Lots of them.

>So are their other lists to cover all agreements between countries, or across collective groups such as the EU?

Sure. Pretty much anything you can imagine, someone has made a law, regulation or treaty about.

I think this might be what you're looking for if you're only interested in getting some basic legal knowledge that would be useful for the layperson. It's published by Law Society so the information is definitely legit, but the language can be fairly utilitarian and dry.

The Singapore Academy of Law also has a detailed information portal [here] (http://www.singaporelaw.sg/sglaw/laws-of-singapore/overview), but it might be a bit too in-depth for casual reading and seems to be written more for people with some background in the legal sector.

If you're more the philosophical type and want to get a bird's eye view of what "law" is and how common law legal systems operate more generally, I recommend picking up "An introduction to Law" by Cambridge University Press. Although it's written from the UK perspective, most of the things it talks about are relevant here as well given that we share much of our legal heritage with the UK. It's available at our libraries and makes for much better casual reading than the other two links.

There is a strange implied premise in the title here. Law doesn't exist to serve the needs of science.

Law does need to deal with scientific information, and it has ways of doing that. For example in the litigation context this can come in through the [Daubert standard] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard), and on the legislation side, Congress often delegates science-intensive policy decisions to administrative agencies with appropriate expertise (and the courts have generally validated this move). There's a whole book about this by Prof. Vermuele called Law's Abnegation. (now, whether this abnegation is constitutional is a whole nuther issue, as our newest Justice of the Supreme Court would be quick to highlight)

Here's the full text of the video, in case anyone wants to save a click:

<<<>>>
The complexity of the many branches of science often require interpreters to relay information to the public in a manner they can understand, and it will continue to become more complicated and move further away from common understanding. Our understanding is expanding alongside the complexity.

Unfortunately, we’re vulnerable to these interpretations being biased or influenced in ways that aren’t purely scientific - which can influence what we consider to be negative or positive due to that bias.

The lack of trust from government toward the scientific community appears as a makeshift system of checks and balances that organically came about to make it difficult for something government doesn’t fully understand to quickly influence policy.

While this is frustrating for society, it’s important to consider why people have those reservations.

In the eyes of the uninformed, two ‘experts’ giving different opinions on something means you’re likely to take the opinion of others who agree with you on various other viewpoints, like economic policies or immigration.

At that point, those involved in politics tend to be off the ‘science’ wagon, and no longer are able to make laws and regulations based on the understanding of those scientific concepts, and will likely make laws based on experts they choose to believe.


Consider that these people tend to have no way to know what is truly scientific unless they were to devote time to science.

For example, in medicine, boards of doctors and associations exist to evaluate science that pertains to medicine. The decisions they make are subject to be made in benefit of variables not accounted for, such as financial reasons (like to maintain the board functional, or continue being paid), or compromises made with governments at the time - in essence anything done for a reason that is not purely scientific.

For most people, a time will come when science is too complicated for you, you will need to trust experts entirely. Whether due to age, mental faculty, or anything else - even if we were once familiar with science, it will eventually become too complex to understand unless followed very closely.


Do you have anything to add? Leave a comment or contact us on twitter @thoughtdose

P.S. Understanding why society creates these barriers is a step in knowing how to phrase the conversation to ensure that we come to a consensus on science and ensuring the public is informed.
<<<>>>

>different aspects of medieval law (the use of Roman law, customary law, feudal law, etc.) primarily in England, France, and/or the HRE from roughly the 11th century up to the Renaissance

Do you have any idea just how massive a subject this is? You're describing four distinct legal systems over a period of five centuries. And yes, I do mean four: England, France, the HRE, and the Roman Catholic Church, which maintained its own legal system in parallel to those maintained by civil authorities of various stripes. Though arguably more than four, as there are discontinuities in the political situations in those jurisdictions over time (e.g., the Norman Conquest in AD 1066 resulted in significant, long-lasting changes to the legal system in England).

And really, while the HRE certainly had its own legal system, the HRE itself was made up of hundreds of individual political units, each of which maintained their own legal systems. As far as that goes, if you think about the relationship between individual US states and the US federal government, you're kind of in the right ballpark, but relationship was not nearly so close, and the diversity between legal systems across various HRE jurisdictions was far more significant than exists under the US system of federalism. The Holy Roman Emperor (and the imperial government generally) exerted far less direct control over most of its constituent polities than the US federal government does over US state and local governments.

All of which to say. . . it depends on the level of detail you're looking for. Your post sounds fairly granular on both the jurisdictional and source-of-law levels. IF you want that, I highly doubt you're going to find a single book that covers more than one legal system for any length of time. But there are definitely books that attempt to trace the macro-level development of Western European legal systems, sometimes reaching back as far as the classical period in Greece. Here's one. This one seems to focus more on France and England, but there's mention of Germanic legal systems in the TOC. Here's another. From the TOC, the period you're interested in is covered in basically one chapter. Probably some good information in there, but there just can't be all that much detail.

See what I mean?

If you PM me your email address, I can also send you my outline.

In terms of books, the most concise and easiest to read book I've found is Copyright in a Nutshell. It's around 400 pages, but it's super short and fat with big text so it's not actually 400 pages worth of reading. The digital version is only $15 on Amazon and my law school's library had it for $20.

If you need something more in depth than the nutshell, I also liked the Copyright E&E. It takes longer to get through, and I wouldn't call it "concise" but it does distill the concepts pretty damn well.

It is a pretty common way to refer to American legal traditions that were imported from England. Common law and Anglo-American law are used somewhat interchangeably although they arguably have slightly different meanings. In the context Sessions said it, Anglo-American actually makes more sense because it more all encompassing when referring to American legal institutions taken from England than simply saying common law. Common law is a body of law and a system of legal reasoning. Anglo-American legal traditions encompass institutions beyond simply the body of law and the system of legal reasoning. Here is a good tweet thread that lays out a few examples of an Obama era DOJ official using the term as well as a Democratic senator and a Supreme Court justice.

https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/963173679994753027

Here are a few legal books that use the terms almost interchangeably in their titles.

https://www.amazon.com/History-Common-Law-Anglo-American-Institutions/dp/0735562903

https://www.amazon.com/Form-Substance-Anglo-American-Law-Institutions/dp/0198257341

https://www.amazon.com/Historical-Introduction-Anglo-American-Law-Nutshell/dp/0314747087

https://library.law.yale.edu/anglo-american-legal-heritage-introductory-materials

Also, Encyclopedia.com treats them as interchangeable.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/politics/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/common-law-anglo-american

That was one of the reasons I decided to pursue patent law. I did an internship in college in engineering and worked for a year as a design engineer. Wasn't for me.

It's hard to say it's worth it because it depends on what you are looking for. I find it is rewarding an interesting, but it can also be stressful and demanding.

One thing you have to understand is that just because you go to law school, doesn't mean you will get a patent law job. I went to law school with a few people with the technical background, but they didn't get a patent law job and are instead working general practice or are out of law completely. If your background is EE, then you are probably much more likely going to have opportunities. Geography can matter, although there are more remote work-from-home attorneys today. You also have to want to do it and be genuinely interested in patent law and the law in general. It's a pretty rigorous journey (law school applications, LSAT's, bar exams, proving yourself at your firm) and the job can be rigorous too. You also have to have good writing and communication skills.

If you want to explore the topic more, I would suggest reading about patent law to see if it sounds interesting to you. One book you can get that is a good summary of patent law is Patent Law by Janice Mueller.

A good starting point:

Working with Contracts: What Law School Doesn't Teach You (PLI's Corporate and Securities Law Library) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002ASFPLO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_FSsSCb6X7QBFX

A good reference guide:

Drafting Contracts: How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do https://www.amazon.com/dp/073556339X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_CUsSCbTDARNN9

I would highly recommend taking a transactional drafting course if your law school offers one.

WL and Lexis both have very good searchable libraries for finding boilerplate clauses and commonly negotiated provisions like indemnities. If you plan to go into real estate, check with your state's real estate council or bar association. They often publish annotated contract clauses that comform to state law.

Edit: spelling

I am retired, financially independent. Pro bono doesn't do it. Tried a few things to do after retirement. A whole different feeling: doing business for fun, need to be cautious only about liability. Was helping a friend to find a place to retire abroad, and ended up writing some books. Lifestyle is more rich when there is change of scenery, history, diverse cultures at a hand's reach. Take a look, the books are free on KindleUnlimited:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XFRNRMD

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XYDN1B3

While it is out of my depth to comment on any historical patterns, it is worth noting that many (possibly most?) Americans have an extremely inaccurate understanding of the degree of litigiousness in their country. The idea that personal responsibility is giving way to litigation is largely a myth constructed by people with a great deal to gain by stifling torts. I'd suggest Distoring the Law for an overview of the topic.

I can tell that there's nothing in the world that would change your mind, but for other people reading this, there isn't a single candidate in the race who better understands how financial institutions and income inequality is fucking the average American better than Warren. She literally wrote the book on consumer debt that is standard for most law schools. She's also largely responsible for CFPB, which, based on how much Republicans and Wall Street hated it, was the greatest government agency ever.

I'm not going to try to take a shit on Sanders, but I don't really give a shit if she was a registered Republican 30 years ago. You want to vote for anti-science, campaign-spoiler, and obvious Republican plant Jill Stein, be my guest. But if you are so enamored with Sanders, you should probably listen to his endorsement if he drops out.

Actually, I looked into this once. It was a huge marketing effort, with many different firms involved, to quell "frivolous" lawsuits in America. The media was included in this campaign to use lawsuits like this to protect corporate America. No one wants to be the next "McDonald's Coffee Lady". There is a pretty good book that was written about it.

The United States is not as litigious of a country as even people within its borders think it is.

In the grand scheme of things, very few people sue for perceived wrongs and even less win. The media has distorted the public's view on this due to their tendency to report the extreme and ignore boring "facts and statistics".

Getting a lawyer to provide you legal advice is simply a solid logical step in sorting out situations where the law may get involved.

You still have no evidence that it did specifically with regard to hiring Warren specifically. All you have is assumptions.

On top of that, you still haven't presented any evidence that she wasn't the most qualified for the position. You simply can't admit to yourself that a woman could get a job like that without some unfair advantage; yet the fact remains she was and likely still is the country's top mind in bankruptcy and consumer law.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1454822384/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?qid=1463342888&sr=8-6&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=warren+bankruptcy+law&dpPl=1&dpID=41oAYH8Re3L&ref=plSrch

She wasn't driving, her grandson was, and they pulled over and stopped the car while she tried to put the lid back on. In any other situation you would have laughed at her for being so overly cautious. There's a damn good reason McDonalds lost that case in the first place, and a very deliberate reason why it's still part of the public consciousness. This book explains it in detail, and provides citations and sources. http://www.amazon.com/Distorting-Law-Politics-Litigation-Chicago/dp/0226314642