Reddit mentions: The best legal history books

>Here's the thing, though...argument is not sufficient. The God of theists is not a concept or abstraction, he is a concrete reality [that requires physical evidence]

Thanks for another interesting reply.

Your objections seem to relate to the coherence of theism. I would like to recommend The Coherence of Theism by Richard Swinburne. I am not going to give you five screenfuls of argument. I will just note that the objection that science cannot locate the cause of phenomena in unobservable entities or processes goes back to Hume and Kant who both wrote before science had had the success it enjoys today in doing just that.

I also think you may be looking at things with a false physicalistic dichotomy: Either things are made of particles or they don’t exist; that is, I think you are equating incorporeal with nonexistent. But this is precisely what theism refutes. It claims that there can be things which are incorporeal and yet which exist: There are physical substances p and immaterial substances q and substances q are not nothing. Indeed, it claims that these substances are the matrix and substrate of physical reality.

It almost seems to me that you expect to find God somewhere in the universe which, as Peter van Inwagen notes, is a little like trying to find Rembrandt in The Night Watch.

That is why Swinburne’s book, The Coherence of Theism, is a helpful starting place. It discusses all the a priori objections to theism (such as the ones you are making) and so clears the air for the second volume in his trilogy: The Existence of God.

>Only if you abandon the concept of an omnibenevolent God. I cannot see any way to reconcile the violence and suffering inherent into evolutionary processes with the designs of a benevolent being.

I still think the higher order goods solution to the problem of evil is a coherent response to both moral and natural evil. And I think that to appeal to the problem of evil you must adopt a counterexperiential pessimism about life. Yes there is suffering—but life is mostly wonderful for most people. And what suffering there is the higher order goods solution accounts for.

>And my view demonstrates the exact opposite. In fact, of all modern religions, Christianity is the one I'm most convinced is false, as it's the one I know the most about. Christians believe God is good...in fact, the Christian God is the ultimate Form of Good. And yet I would consider a deity that behaved in the way believed by Christian theology to be an objectively evil being. Any father who would sacrifice his own child just to abate his own wrath at a third party cannot, under any moral system I accept, be considered good or even neutral...this is a downright Evil act.

Here it seems to me that you take no real account of how Swinburne spells out the Christian doctrine of atonement since what you say above does not engage with his argument. I can only suggest you take another look. Remember: In Swinburne's argument God lives and suffers in Christ to show solidarity with us in the suffering he allows. The brutal execution is to ensure that he shares in the worst of human suffering and it is the perfect life he lived that is the atonement we offer him. There is also the very substantial evidence for the post mortem appearances of Jesus which makes it, on historical and evidential grounds, the most probably true of all religions.

In any case, if you really have looked at all the arguments and feel that you have satisfied your intellectual obligations and yet remain unconvinced, one final area to explore might be direct religious experience. For example, I notice that you say,

>I understand that people have these experiences, but when it comes down to it, I have not. If I were to accept that your experiences were sufficient evidence for your beliefs, then I would have to also accept that my lack of experience was sufficient evidence for mine, and I don't find either compelling.

However, Swinburne shows that lack of religious experience is not evidence for the nonexistence of God or any reason to think God does not exist,

>If it seems to me that there is present a table in the room, or statue in the garden, then probably there is. But if it seems to me that there is no table in the room, then that is only reason for supposing that there is not, if there are good grounds for supposing that I have looked everywhere in the room and (having eyes in working order, being able to recognize a table when I see one, etc.) would have seen one if there was one there. An atheist’s claim to have had an experience of its seeming to him that there is no God could be evidence that there was no God only if similar restrictions were satisfied.

And he goes on to argue that the only way to do so is to provide a proof of atheism.

You seem to acknowledge this when you say you don't find either compelling. But I think his argument from religious experience provides rational grounds for giving such experiences, especially if they are forceful, evidential worth.

If I were in your position I would undertake a spiritual experiment. In his comparative study of mystical experience, The Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley makes a very interesting claim about God and testability. He says that it is possible for a mind to prove to itself that God exists with scientific exactitude. How?

Huxley suggests that God can be directly known only through mystical experiences insusceptible to rational scrutiny and ordinary sensory perception. A starting point for the ordinary seeker of truth is therefore a provisional faith in the authority of other mystics who, in every culture throughout human history, have proclaimed that God exists. In doing this, Huxley adds that the seeker is not being irrational or unscientific. We put our faith in the regularity of nature and in the authority of qualified experts whose claims we accept without personally verifying them and also in our own working hypotheses, “sufficient to induce us to test our provisional beliefs by means of appropriate action.”

If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best thing one can do, in the field of metaphysics, is to study the works of those who were. In practical terms, Huxley would have us undertake a study of mystical experience. As we do this, points of commonality emerge. One essential shared criterion is the mortification of the self and a deep meditative focus upon God as the grounding of all being.

How is this scientific? Because it is testable, repeatable, and falsifiable. How testable? Here are the steps to take—try it for yourself. How repeatable? Many have repeated these actions and arrived at the same results. How falsifiable? You can try this experiment yourself and, if it doesn't work, you have falsified it. However, people who have taken these steps have always arrived at the same result. In short: Your honor, I have evidence proving that God exists. I cannot demonstrate this evidence but you can view this evidence yourself if you do x, y, and z.

I have heard of a few now-deeply religious people who began by praying experimentally, “God, I’m seeking you. If you’re there, please reveal yourself to me.”

This turned out to be their, "fatal mistake."

)

So this is the thing: I'm a lawyer, which is a career in the pursuit of persuasion, but isn't necessarily a rhetoric degree. I have met people from Universities that offer a specific degree in rhetoric, but that's not me.

Off the top of my head...without searching google: the best book that I think would be available to laypersons is "The Legal Analyst." http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226238350/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1/175-4668907-7869735?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_r=0BAXZK8EV16FHS7DNQ77&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=1944687682&pf_rd_i=0674062485

It's intended for new law school graduates and t hose thinking about going to law school. It opens your eyes into the intricacy of information presentation and how to poke holes in other people's presentation of evidence. Very concise, very well written.

personally, I've read: THe Legal Analyst and "The Art of War." -- The Art of War was a favorite of Bill Clinton. One book I've heard of amongst people who are into this is. How to win friends and influence people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People)

If you're interested in more information, you can google "game theory" in general, and that brings up a lot of information.

I personally stay away from "how to win friends" and a lot of stuff of that nature because there is a point where you study something so much that it becomes fake, and I don't want the friends I have to be fake or acquired through strategy, and not through my own charming personality. :)

Took a course on legal history in law school, so I know a bit but I'm in no ways a scholar on this. Your question greatly depends on what country you're asking about. Generally, there are three major types of legal systems in the world today: civil law, common law, and sharia law.

Civil law is the most common system and is used in countries like France, Germany, etc. Common law is used by countries like the United States and India. Interestingly, the only countries in the world today that use common law were once British colonies. Sharia law is law based off the Quran.

Assuming your question is in regards to the US, our legal tradition is largely based on the English common law system. Common law originated in England, but it certainly didn't "grow" out of Roman law.

The western world's legal systems collapsed with the fall of the Roman Empire. Rome had a surprisingly robust and complex legal system which we know of thanks to Justinian's Code, which was one Roman emperor's attempts to condense the very complex and fragmented Roman legal system into three volumes.

When the Roman Empire collapsed, legal systems across Europe fell back into simplistic systems like an eye-for-an-eye. There's an old English code out there that specifically states each specific crime and its punishment (e.g., caught stealing you lose a hand), but I forgot the name of it. Either way, it remains an example of how far law regressed after the fall of the Roman Empire. It's from this collapsed system that the common law grew. As England grew, its legal system grew increasingly complex with it. The most significant development from it was where judicial precedent was valued as a tool for interpretation. This basing our interpretation of the law on precedent is basically what we call common law today.

It's worth noting that the US legal system is quite a bit different from the Enlgish one today, but we actually have some more traditional elements that England has done away with, like the Grand Jury.

If you want to read more into it:
https://www.amazon.com/Anglo-American-Legal-Heritage-Introductory-Materials/dp/1594600384

A Concise History of the Common Law, by T.F.T. Plucknett.

It's not exactly "concise," but if you have any appreciation for common law or legal history, you will learn an incredible amount! It also makes a good reference when you decide you are OCD enough to care about something like the differences between trover and detinue. There's a vast amount of historical trivia that really helps shed light on the common law system that continues to exist today.

I guess if you're in Louisiana you probably don't care... :)

Some good book recommendations in the article:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/177068.The_Fabric_of_Reality

https://www.amazon.com/Delta-v-Daniel-Suarez/dp/1524742414/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=delta+v&qid=1562420668&s=gateway&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Fact-England-1550-1720/dp/0801488494

​

I didn't like Fall overmuch, but the interview helps put some of the story points into better context. Cohen makes a great point about no one wishing Paradise Lost to be any longer than it is- that applies equally well to the groaningly large books Stephenson has put out in the last decade.

The legal analyst was recommended to me as a summer read by one of my profs. Once my brain re-solidifies from the mush I'm pounding it into right now I'll try and read it this summer. But I might skip the book and focus on drinking instead. My outlines are crap and I'm going to need to put in a silly amount of work just to get through these next few weeks.

I also liked the Lincoln Lawyer by Connely. But remember, nothing you read will give you a leg up grade wise. Only thing you can do to possibly make your employment prospects better would be to gain a second language, or make your resume more interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Legal-Analyst-Toolkit-Thinking/dp/0226238350

I'm not sure why you're interested in theology per se when your question is epistemic, generally in the domain of philosophy of religion. Given the nature of your question, though, it seems you're looking for something that deals with preliminaries. In this case, I'd recommend Swinburne's The Coherence of Theism.

>This book investigates what it means, and whether it is coherent, to say that there is a God. The author concludes that, despite philosophical objections, the claims which religious believers make about God are generally coherent; and that although some important claims are coherent only if the words by which they are expressed are being used in stretched or analogical senses, this is in fact the way in which theologians have usually claimed they are being used.

If you're interested in the broader impact theology has had on the world, I'd recommend something like Hannam's The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution. But that only deals with science.

This might be much more specific than you were looking for, but The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I by Pollock and Maitland is arguably one of the best works of legal history ever produced. The way it tracks the evolution of the common law in England is still relevant to modern common law based legal systems. These guys were giants of their time, and I found the legal developments to be some of the most interesting aspects of the medieval period. Fair warning, there are two volumes, and they are not really for mere casual reading.

>So how does that relate to socio-political movements that have called for the installation, or accommodation for communal use, of Shariah law? What I mean is, if very few to none of the national instances of purported Shariah law have credibility among Muslims, then is it safe to assume that these movements have a different philosophical orientation to the interpretation of Shariah that the hope to implement? Or are such movements little more than vocal minorities even within the Muslim communities for which they presume to speak? Or have I altogether misunderstood the situation?

first, I would say that such movements exist more as a result of disillusionment with sloppy implementations of Islamic law in the world rather than as a result of it. You don't really hear anybody claiming to want to copy Saudi Arabia. Secondly, I'm not sure what philosophical orientations of modern state solutions are so I can't really contrast them with grassroots Islamist movements, however, I will say that many movements are not exactly steeped in scholarly learning, rather they tend to either invoke religious slogans to rally people behind political causes, or they sincerely believe that the solution to all their problems is to adopt a form of government more rooted in Islamic principles, whatever they may be. Perhaps that makes them identical to states. Also, there isn't really a consistent attitude towards Islamist parties across the Muslim world, dozens of countries and 1.5 billion people.

>What about sentencing? The impression that one gets from media reports on Shariah law is that the sentences tend to be strict. Is that fairly accurate, or is that mostly indicative of the application of Shariah law in certain national contexts? My assumption would be that, if the law itself is purposely left vague to allow for the judgment of the person applying that law, then you would want sentences to be proportionately soft, since a vague law would leave some opportunity for injustice.

sorry I was not clear. What I meant by lenient was more like permissive or accommodating. It's entirely possible that there are numerous possible interpretations of sacred law, all of them considered harsh or strict by today's standards, and it's entirely possible that there are numerous interpretations, some of them are harsh and some of them are surprisingly not harsh. Ultimately, I think law deserves to be examined dispassionately, without agenda or desire to sanitize for a particular audience. As for criminal sentencing, really a very small part of shariah, the vast majority of crimes are left to judicial discretion. Only four different crimes have prescribed punishments in the Quran. And yes, judicial discretion allows the possibility of abuse though the religious emphasis is to not punish.

>Of the first set of principles -- would it be possible for you to give a brief summary? Or is it complex enough to make that a hassle on a forum like this?

I can't really give a complete summary. Even a short one would be a small book. This is probably the best book in English on principles of islamic law, but it's very dense, and I don't recommend it unless you are already familiar with the subject - my own copy is covered in notes. I poked around on amazon and the same author has this which seems like a much better survey of the subject although I haven't read it.

Some stuff that's important in contemporary analytic phil religion:

The Miracle of Theism by J.L. Mackie

God, Freedom, and Evil by Alvin Plantinga

God and Other Minds by Alvin Plantinga

The Coherence of Theism by Richard Swinburne

The Existence of God by Richard Swinburne

Can God Be Free? by William Rowe

Perceiving God by William Alston

Are you an American? If so, to truly understand our Constitution (the basis of all our law) you need to understand Locke. I can't recommend a specific book, but I'm sure you can figure it out.

For more understanding on the American system of law, I also recommend the Federalist and the Anti-Federalist Papers. The Anti-Fed papers are arguably more important, since the Anti-Feds gave us the Bill of Rights. But the Fed Papers get all the sexy press.

For a better understanding of US Criminal law, you might want to read Bentham and Kant.

Specific primers you might try are: America Legal History: Cases and Materials, and Cases and Materials on Criminal Law.

Note that most legal treatises are ungodly expensive and mind-numbingly difficult to read. You might want to get some tuition on reading court opinions before embarking on your journey--it's not as easy at it (should be) seems, and if you only read other people's analysis...well, that's like getting your news from FOX or MSNBC: you always have to wonder about the spin.

Are you suggesting that the dynamic is anything but of its time?

You could make an argument that the agency displayed by the female characters in Romeo and Juliet, not just the titular character but also the Nurse, indicate The Bard was rather forward thinking... But on the other hand you have feuding fathers who all but ensure the demise of their children as a result of male dominated Veronan society. Hashtag DamnThePatriarchy.

t. I once read read 1000 Times More Fair by Yoshino (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HW76ZO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1).

EDIT - I am assuming that by sex you mean "gender," which is perhaps my first mistake. If this were a course in how intercourse impacted power, I would point you to Chaucer's Wife of Bath and it's bawdiness and draw comparisons from there.

What level is this course?

Not all of these have cannibalism, but most:

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Poe, The Boat, In The Heart of The Sea (this is a really awesome book, as are the authors other works), Endurance, Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls, The Wreck of the Medusa, The Wreck of the Dumaru, Life of Pi

A couple non-fiction (with a legal focus) books about the Mignonette incident and the resulting famous case of Regina v Dudley and Stevens: Is Eating People Wrong?, and The Custom of the Sea

If any of you Reddit Lawyers want to know what impeachment actually is and how involved it is, check out former Chief Justice Rehnquist's amazingly prescient book Grand Inquests on impeachments, which he wrote the year Clinton was elected.

It was a weird quote from a book that I liked so much... but here it is

https://www.amazon.com/Poor-Robin-1707-almanack-fashion/dp/117051832X

"Lawyers and Physicians have little to do this month, so they may (if they will) play at Scotch-hoppers."

The most helpful book I read was The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking About the Law.

It is too late in the day for a sustained discussion. I will point you to an interesting book called "An introduction to the laws of the Duchy of Cornwall" by John Kirkhope https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Duchy-Cornwall-Scilly-Isles-ebook/dp/B00GB0HWUO

By understanding some of the issues that surround the "Cornish Question" and the constitutional problems it raises you may better understand my very deep concerns about the Westminster Government and the British establishment. The EU is above such concerns and as such gave the Cornish people a fair hearing. Forcing laws on Westminster that they could not, or would not have implemented themselfs. They barely paid lip service to those EU directives concerning Cornwall and the Cornish people in fear of raising the "Cornish Question" with the constitutional quagmire that would ensue.

The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking about the Law by Ward Farnsworth.

As the title states, it provides you with many tools of thinking about the law, like- the least cost avoider, the single owner, public goods, cascades, suppressed markets, slippery slopes, baselines, framing effects, anchoring, standards of proof etc.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Legal-Analyst-Toolkit-Thinking/dp/0226238350

http://www.amazon.com/Sharia-Versus-Freedom-Islamic-Totalitarianism-ebook/dp/B00C4B2HEK/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1410207544&sr=8-7&keywords=Sharia+law

I'd definitely recommend Ian Cobain - The History Thieves: Secrets, lies and the shaping of a modern nation

>I said that it's hard because people want it this way.

That ascribes a sort of extensive collaboration to legislators and lawyers that I'm a little dubious of.

I agree that in many cases, law is more complicated than it might be (though I think that you might be surprised how much work does go into coming up with reasonable standards). However, I don't think that this is because some cabal conspired to make it more complicated, but rather because this is an emergent property of the system that exist for several reasons.

• When you write code, you know how it often grows organically and acquires cruft, as more and more details that you didn't think of or originally weren't relevant came up and need to be patched? Consider law as a hundreds-of-years-old-codebase with those same patches.
  
  
• Law may not be as precisely-defined as software, but it needs to take something that is not very precisely-defined (human conventions, day-to-day English) and make it more precise without making someone learn a completely new language. There was a point in time where lawyers did do so (Latin, and there are still some vestiges of this remaining; as I said above, cruft). I think that this can make things a bit difficult to read. Law often has some odd word orderings, and uses terms in ways that aren't quite like plain English. In the case of patents, it flagrantly ignores normal rules of good written English in trying to optimize for short, easily-processed sentences.
  
  
• The consequences of being misunderstood in the case of law (if, say, you are drafting a constitution or passing a law) can be severe, and sometimes a text is painfully awkward to read, after lawyers have optimized the text for "not having any way in which someone could 'misconstrue' the text to their advantage".
  
  I would wholeheartedly endorse the book I linked to above, The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking About The Law. I originally got the recommendation for it on Reddit as one of a set of recommendations in a thread in which people listed the most worthwhile books they'd read. I would now re-recommend it. It is intended to give someone a sort of basic understanding of the kind of thought process that goes into crafting law without using any terminology that would require someone to have any legal background.
  
  >So, to reaterate, it's hard, but not controlled nuclear fusion hard or artificial stem cells hard, it's tax code hard.
  
  So, the idea is that it requires knowledge, dead passive information, but not smarts?
  
  I'm not sure that it's so easy to separate the two. I've always been very dubious of the idea that people have some sort of mental amazing characteristic that just lets them "do" something that someone else can't, and more that almost everything in your ever-so-plastic brain is a learned characteristic, something where if something is properly taught, anyone could learn how to do it well.
  
  There's an oft-cited paper ("The camel has two humps", Dehnadi and Bornat) on programming education showing a link between performance on a certain test and later ability to program. I think that this is often misconstrued to mean that there are some sort of inborn characteristics that just let some people program and others not.