as far as spring rates for the front i was taught to have the lightest spring possible to keep the car from bottoming out on bumps or hard stops, and run BIG sway bars...
At some point it just links both sides of the suspension.
Under straight line braking they don't work. So you transfer a bunch of weight to the front end and jack up the rear which overpowers the availible friction in the front tires and unloads the rear tires.
Here's a video of my cars front suspension at the track. Watch the lower control arm movement compared to the sway bar movement. Notice how they are not always the same. The sway bar has to react to the suspension action. The front springs/T-bars don't have that waiting reaction time. The front springs resistance to weight transfer is much more immediate.
Running ball joint type sway bar links makes that reaction time smaller. Rich Ehrenberg noted that when he changed to ball joint type rod ends on the Green Brick the car turned crisper into corners. That's because he cut the reaction time down.