Bad Law by Elie Mystal

Bad Law

Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America

Elie Mystal, Audible Studios

The New Press · Print & ebook · March 25, 2025

In this New York Times bestseller, Elie Mystal offers a brilliant takedown of ten shocking pieces of legislation that continue to perpetuate hate, racial bias, injustice, and inequality today—an urgent yet hopeful read for our current political climate “Mystal is a grassroots legal superhero, and his superpower is the ability to explain to the masses in clear language the all-too-human forces at play behind the making of our laws.” —Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times bestselling author of Tears We Cannot Stop In Bad Law, the New York Times bestselling author of Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution reimagines what our legal system, and society at large, could look like if we could move past legislation plagued by racism, misogyny, and corruption.

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Who it’s for
A brisk, accessible take on how popular laws shape—and warp—public life.
Genres
Civil Rights, Discrimination Law, Constitutional Law
Published
The New Press, March 25, 2025

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About this book

In this New York Times bestseller, Elie Mystal offers a brilliant takedown of ten shocking pieces of legislation that continue to perpetuate hate, racial bias, injustice, and inequality today—an urgent yet hopeful read for our current political climate “Mystal is a grassroots legal superhero, and his superpower is the ability to explain to the masses in clear language the all-too-human forces at play behind the making of our laws.” —Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times bestselling author of Tears We Cannot Stop In Bad Law, the New York Times bestselling author of Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution reimagines what our legal system, and society at large, could look like if we could move past legislation plagued by racism, misogyny, and corruption.

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Through accessible yet detailed prose and trenchant wit, Mystal argues that these egregiously awful laws—his “Bill of Wrongs”—continue to cause systematic and individual harm and should be repealed completely. By exposing the flawed foundations of the rules we live by, and through biting humor and insight, Bad Law offers a crisp, pertinent take on: - abortion and the Hyde Amendment, and the role federal funding, or lack thereof, has played in depriving women of necessary health and reproductive care - immigration and illegal reentry, and the illusions that have been sold to us regarding immigration policy, reform, and whiteness at large - voter registration laws, and how the right to vote has become a moral issue, and ironically, antidemocratic - gun control and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and the extreme yet obvious dangers of granting immunity to gun manufacturers But, as the man Samantha Bee calls “irrepressible and righteously indignant” and Matt Levine of Bloomberg Opinion calls “the funniest lawyer in America,” points out, these laws do not come to us from on high; we write them, and we can and should unwrite them. In a fierce, funny, and wholly original takedown spanning all the hot-button topics in the country today, one of our most brilliant legal thinkers points the way to a saner tomorrow.

Why It Lands

A brisk, accessible take on how popular laws shape—and warp—public life.

Come here for

  • clear-eyed legal critique
  • classroom-ready framing

Expect

  • practical, straightforward voice
  • civil-rights and political context

Where it sits

Civil Rights37%
Constitutional Law23%
Discrimination Law18%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Social History
  • Legal History
  • Discrimination Law
  • Legal Essays
Show all 8 publisher categories
  • Legal Reform
  • Political Writing
  • Conservatism & Liberalism
  • Religion & Politics
Authors
Elie Mystal, Audible Studios
Publisher
The New Press
Published
March 25, 2025
Format
Print & ebook
Reading lane
Social History