Click for current price: Amazon US, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia

Apple, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay

“Show me the man, I’ll show you the crime.” — Lavrentiy Beria, longest-serving secret police chief under Joseph Stalin.

“…the average American commits three felonies a day without even knowing it.” — Brett Tolman, Former U.S. Attorney, Executive Director Right on Crime.

You’re a felon. I’m a felon. We’re all felons here.

I had a vague idea of how Byzantine the U.S. “legal system” has become. I use quotes, because many of our laws didn’t come from our judicial branch, but from departments formed under the executive branch. This book explores why and how it happens, and some of the human toll of the cost. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost …

Followers of U.S. politics will recognize Neil Gorsuch as one of the conservative members of the Supreme Court. This book is thankfully very light on cultural issues, and instead highlights a problem that the right and the left both should want to solve.

For a book about law, it is very readable (and in fact, is hostile to how impenetrable law has become. Did you know that at one point, if a law in the U.S. was deemed too hard to understand, you would not be charged. Yeah. Sigh.)

If there is any weakness to the book, it would be that it isn’t just humans and money at stake. I know about the problem of “Over Ruling” due to a project my dad was working on back in the 80s and 90s. It got stuck between a pissing match between the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] and the Occupational Health and Safety Agency [Osha]. The delay endangered the Desert Tortoise, a threatened species, and thousands of miles of wild life habitat.

Anyway, highly recommend this book. Here’s the blurb …

[Read more…]