Book recommendations needed

[petrea_mitchell]

It's gift card season and there are a couple sorts of books I would like to get with mine, but I don't even know what sorts of terms to start searching on.

1) Something about different legal systems and the philosophies that go with them. How they shape how people think about what the law is even for, and so forth. Would prefer to focus on modern systems, but historical examples are fine if they help illuminate the present. (E.g. I have come across mentions a few times that things work in such and such a way in France or its former colonies because they were shaped by the Napoleonic code.)

2) How the governments of really huge cities/metropoles work.

Blogs or newsletters are okay too. But no podcasts or YouTube series unless they're scripted, please.

Comments

[merrileemakes]

I'm not sure if this meets your podcast requirements but the series More Perfect is about the US supreme court and how it's shaped America.

I haven't listened (because not my circus) but it's made by the people who did Radiolab, which is a god tier podcast for content and audio design.

[tanaqui]

For the UK legal system, you could try the books by The Secret Barrister ("Stories of the law and how it's broken", "Fake Law: the Truth About Justice in an Age of Lies" and "Nothing but the Truth".) They're based on her experiences as a junior barrister and talk how the law actually works in practice, how people think it works and how it's supposed to work.