Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America
In her review of Bad Law, Isabel Behling discusses how Elie Mystal blends sharp wit with insightful critiques of ten laws that perpetuate injustice and inequality in the United States today.
Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America by Elie Mystal, published by The New Press
It’s often easy to forget that laws are not set in stone. I know I’ve personally struggled with this idea. When growing up in the American public education system, laws are taught as infallible pieces of the American mythos that cannot, and should not, be challenged, but instead followed without hesitation or resistance.
But the truth is, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights did not drop out of the sky right into the founding fathers’ hands. People made laws. People chose what to value and what to forbid, and they chose who deserved what and wrote who they thought were undeserving out of the equation completely. While many aspects of our country’s inception were influenced by the presence of Christianity, the laws we have now are not preordained. They were chosen, and they not only can be but should be challenged. And, as Elie Mystal argues in his newest book, Bad Law: Ten Popular Rules that are Ruining America, some of them should be scrapped altogether.
Bad Law is at times both a hilarious and deeply unsettling exposé on some of the most popular and disastrous laws that affect Americans every single day in ways they don’t even realize. Ranging from voter registration laws to air regulation to felony murder to the Hyde Amendment, Mystal challenges the existence of these laws, uncovers how beneficial (or, in most cases, unbeneficial) they truly are, and calls for their complete eradication. Through explaining these laws in their historical, political, and social contexts, Mystal reveals the true nature behind the passing of these laws and how both parties, Republicans and Democrats, are complicit in their harmful consequences. By calling to repeal these laws, Mystal hopes to educate audiences about the existence and inefficiency of popular laws and equip people with the knowledge they need to combat misinformation about these laws and prove their inadequacy.
One of the sections of this book that I found the most interesting was How can you murder someone if you didn’t kill anybody? where Mystal goes into detail about felony murder charges in this country and how they disproportionally target black men. I had no idea what felony murder was before picking up this book, but Mystal is not only able but willing to explain complex legal jargon to the everyday American citizen. Felony murder is the idea that if someone dies while you are committing a crime, even if you are not directly responsible for their death, you can be charged with murder. This law can be used to punish individuals for crimes they did not commit, keeping them in jail longer than they deserve.
Mystal also talks about the castle doctrine and how defending one’s property is often seen as more important than preserving human lives. The precedence of gun ownership over the protection of American lives is a point that Mystal is not afraid to call out multiple times within the pages of this book, and he is very adamant about the need for a change in American ideology surrounding gun laws.
But with all these popular laws, how do we make change? Mystal argues that the only way to create individual change at home is to not only vote, but to vote consistently and radically. The existence of these laws, Mystal argues, is keeping America from becoming the best nation it can be, a nation of equality and equity for all of its inhabitants. Because every voice is not heard in the federal government due to the size of our Senate and House of Representatives, it is our job to do everything in our power to make our voices heard at the local level.
Mystal’s rallying cry is this: seek knowledge, combat ignorance. Vote always, and do it loudly. Only then can we begin to fix the foundations of this country and create a better tomorrow.
