Law School for Everyone: Legislation and Regulation

by Peter J. Smith

A relatively recent addition to more traditional law school topics like torts and contracts, legislation and regulation have become more and more of a mainstay in some of the country's top law schools.

Over the course of 12 nuanced and balanced lectures, examine a host of topics including the nature of regulation, the merits of lawmaking by legislation, the challenge of interpreting statutes, and the role of federal agencies in our legal system.

Along the way, confront intriguing - and controversial - questions about the letter versus the spirit of the law, how much authority independent federal agencies should have, and when a court or the president should step in to impose their own interpretations. Also, get introductions to concepts like the intelligible principle (the standard, set by Congress, designed to guide and limit an agency's authority) and hard-look reviews (court-conducted reviews designed to focus on the substance of agency decision making).

Given the increasingly prominent role of legislation and regulation in today's national discourse, it's critical for law students and everyday leaders alike to understand how these forms of law govern countless aspects of our lives - including everything from workplace safety to the speed of your internet connection. These lectures are a fascinating introduction to how we, as citizens, can make sense of the law so we can comply with it - or challenge it when necessary.

Genres: Law, Politics, Nonfiction, Legal, Audiobook, Philosophy

Audible Audio

Published April 26, 2019

Reviews

[Pepe Renteria · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO fun. It’s a good book if u like thinking and wondering.
It talks about how law is interpreted a lot. And shows a lot of big cases. They don’t have super clear answers all the time and leave you wondering a lot about how law should be interpreted.
Personally enjoyed a lot. Learned a lot. Would recommend.

[Dallin · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the better great courses series that I’ve listen to.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, but then I've enjoyed all of the Great Courses things I've come across whether or not it's been as an audiobook format, visual, or even a text file here and there. Well worth it and I highly recommend.

If you're looking for something to pick up where your high school or college civics and US Government classes left off, as a refresher, or even as part of continuing education this should find it's way into your reading list.

When it comes to the audio version of this, I found it at the local library and the professor teaching the course had a great voice that worked well for narrating. He was easy to understand at 1.2 times speed, and in a quiet room I could crank it up to 1.4 times speed and follow along. That's an important aspect of audiobooks for me.

[Alex Shrugged · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the course helpful in understanding the complexity of government legislation and court decisions on what the law means. After the course I was not much clearer on how the law is interpreted, but there was enough there to serve as a warning. The law might not mean what I think it means. A lot depends on the judge and what he or she thinks it means. That doesn't mean the judge can be arbitrary. There are guidelines, but those guidelines offer a lot of leeway. It is scary.

The professor occasionally came up with some humorous analogies that helped illustrate the problem of interpreting the law. I enjoyed that.

I'm not sure I will listen to this audio course again. As I said before, the law is murky and all this course did was to explain how it is often murky even with the best of intentions to be clear.

[Vlad Ardelean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Law is complicated and - quite to be expected - there is no "ultimate solution".

One permanent conflict is the battle between interpreting statues literally (following the letter) vs following an underlying/overarching/common sensical interpretation (following the spirit of the law).

The arguments for the spirit of the law are obvious - it shields us from ridiculous results. The arguments for interpreting the letter of the law are that sometimes, laws are political compromises and there's no underlying more general interpretation.

An interesting point is that judges (for some reason the author calls them "justices") are supposed to make very fee value judgments (and thus follow the letter of the law). This is because they were not democratically chosen, and so do not represent the will of "the people". The will of the people is represented by "Congress".

[Roo Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Good course, but not exactly what I was expecting. This isn't so much on how legislation and regulation works. It briefly addresses separation of powers and legislative vs appointed/agency authority. However, it is primarily about how courts interpret and discover meaning in legislative statutes. Case after case is analyzed, showing why the supreme court's majority opinion ultimately prevailed, but also why the dissent also made rational sense. Addressing a simple question like, if a statute states that a vehicle is not allowed in a park, how should the court interpret that statute when the vehicle is a bicycle, or an ambulance? Does the court have freedom to investigate original legislative intent/meaning? Or, are they required to read the language plainly? Etc. I was left feeling that our whole legal system is a quagmire. I respect and feel sorry for judges.

[Dav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great intro into some of the decision-making processes that happened between judges and agencies and executive branch and Congress. Author brings up some very interesting example cases

[AttackGirl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hundreds of years of concepts. So what are all the rules, regulations, ordinances and are they legal?

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

(audiobook)

[Bill Dauster · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent short review of statutory interpretation and administrative law

[Emma Pontzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its explains some of the conflicts of thought that go with laws.

[Matthew Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good introduction to the core concepts within America legal interpretation. However, it does not cover as many cases as one would study in university lectures on this topic.

[Skyler Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This lecture series was both educational and interesting. It focuses most of its time on the difference between legislative statues, judicial common law, and agency rules. Then the lecturer delves into how the courts historically deal with balancing the authority of each as-well-as the inter-dependencies. Additionally, the lecturer spends a good amount of time describing how agencies are formed both by the executive and legislative branches and the Constitutional authority of these delegated bodies.

My only knock against this lecture is that I felt the subjects wondered very slightly, but I think this stems more out of the length and format the lecture was done in. Six hours provides enough time to go into significant details. Unfortunately, there is a missing civics or political science lecture that I feel someone should first try before listening to this. Getting a better understanding of the motivation behind different agencies, independent agencies, and bureaus along with their political processes would have made this lecture easier to consume.

[Ethan Petuchowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very clear and informative, with appropriate length. Lots of important subtopics that I had not thought about, like how should the courts evaluate how much power the president has over the rules followed by the regulatory agencies.

[Jay Mawicke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I had applied myself a bit more to this read, interesting for sure. The author does a good job switching between anecdotes and facts. I wish it was a bit more structured, I thought the central chapters really blended together a bit too much.