I am interested in how the no precedent thing works. Doesn't it have potential to make things widely inconsistent?

In Poland where we have similar rules in place it's just purely theoretical principle. In practice precedent is very important and learning about what other courts ruled ("orzecznictwo") is what lawyers spend their time on. It's as important if not more than the letter of the law in practice.

Source: my ex was a lawyer and we have a number of lawyer friends (judges, attorneys, corporate lawyers).

Higher courts can make fundamental decisions which are binding for other courts; however these are not precedent as they only clarify how the law is to be interpreted in general.

There are indeed inconsistencies in the decisions of the lower courts, and in some cases (like defamation suits) with no clear geographic reference this can lead to forum shopping.

Edit: An important point that I forgot to make is that in cases where a lower court might deviate from the usual legal practice, it may be required to ask a higher court to decide in the matter precisely to avoid grave inconsistencies. So case law is never completely irrelevant in Germany.

It's too bad the US is too hard headed to adopt some of these practices.

You're absolutely right! The US is pretty hard-headed on any number of subjects, reasonable or otherwise. A lot of these are great ideas.

Formalizing into law the system where a judge decides what is a reasonable amount of attorney's fees definitely sounds like an improvement! Though I can see where revamping the fundamental structure of a legal system could be challenging, time-consuming, and probably messy.

I don't think it is just being hard headed. I don't know of a practical non-disruptive way to change the basis of the US legal system away from common law.

Edit: not that I support the legal status quo, I just don't see the public bipartisan will to make that level of systemic reform

That's pretty much what I mean by hard headed, no one is willing to consider change. Not an individual, just the people that create laws and policies.

Yeah no kidding. Common law is perhaps at the heart of how rich Americans understand the state. And then the overrepresentation of lawyers in legislatures just makes this worse. Either way, this stuff is completely sacrosanct for no good reason.

>this stuff is completely sacrosanct for no good reason.

Evolved law systems, like common law, do have some elegance that most people tend to overlook. Here's one article I found very interesting:

http://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/ECM_PRO_060886.pd...