Thank you, The New Press, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Mr. Book just finished Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America, by Elie Mystal.

This book will be released on March 25, 2025. It is my second book that I have read by this author. I previously gave Allow Me To Retort an A+ in 2022.

There are so many great points that the author makes and so much material in this book that I’ve decided to go chapter by chapter on his 10 laws (OK, 9 laws plus one constitutional amendment).

Mystal starts with how voter registration laws are a form of voter suppression. He goes into history of voting and explains that John Adams, among others, wanted to restrict voting the “right people” (aka rich white men) and registration is just a modern day way to attempting to limit voting rights. He then tackles immigration in the next chapter on our immigration laws.

After that, we get a discussion of neoliberalism (or, as the author correctly points out, Democrats acting like Republicans) and deregulation—using the airline industry as his example. He then moves on to criminal law. At first, it appears the chapter will be about the 1994 Crime Bill, which while bad, wasn’t the worst federal criminal law on the books. Mystal says “The best way to think about the bill is as the capstone to a decade-long project of criminalizing Blackness and locking up Black youths for the titillation and applause of white voters.” But, instead, the focus is on Reagan’s 1984 crime bill (the Armed Career Criminal Act) and other criminal laws.

We then get a chapter of giving liability immunity to gun manufacturers. Then comes felony murder statutes. For those smart enough not to go to law school, that means charging someone with murder even though they didn’t intend to kill someone while they were committing a different crime. We then move up to the Castle Doctrine, which allows one to kill trespassers even though they presented no threat to them. And when you look at how the law is actually implemented, it means it allows whites to kill blacks who accidentally trespass onto their land without presenting any harm. The same chapter also covers Stand Your Ground laws, which extends that doctrine to anywhere in which a white person feels as if they are threatened by the presence of a black person.

There are also chapters on the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal money from being used for abortions. That would be the easiest to repeal, since it is an annual provision in the budget and would just need to have that line deleted.Then there is coverage of “Don’t Say Gay” laws. The book concludes with the RFRA, which “has become the biggest tool in the shed of Christian fundamentalists looking to force their God down other people’s throats. It has perverted the free exercise clause from a shield for the oppressed into a weapon of the oppressors.”

There are so many great arguments in this book. I give it a well-deserved A+ and induct it into the Hall of Fame.

I hope that it will also come out in audiobook version, so I can also listen to it.

Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A+ equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

Mr. Book finished reading this on December 10, 2024.