What do you think?
Rate this book
The Nonsense Factory: The Making and Breaking of the American Legal System
A withering and witty examination of how the American legal system, burdened by complexity and untrammeled growth, fails Americans and threatens the rule of law itself, by the acclaimed author of A Generation of Sociopaths .
Our trial courts conduct hardly any trials, our correctional systems do not correct, and the rise of mandated arbitration has ushered in a shadowy system of privatized "justice." Meanwhile, our legislators can't even follow their own rules for making rules, while the rule of law mutates into a perpetual state of emergency. The legal system is becoming an incomprehensible farce. How did this happen?
In The Nonsense Factory , Bruce Cannon Gibney shows that over the past seventy years, the legal system has dangerously confused quantity with quality and might with legitimacy. As the law bloats into chaos, it staggers on only by excusing itself from the very commands it insists that we obey, leaving Americans at the mercy of arbitrary power. By examining the system as a whole, Gibney shows that the tragedies often portrayed as isolated mistakes or the work of bad actors -- police misconduct, prosecutorial overreach, and the outrages of imperial presidencies -- are really the inevitable consequences of law's descent into lawlessness.
The first book to deliver a lucid, comprehensive overview of the entire legal system, from the grandeur of Constitutional theory to the squalid workings of Congress, The Nonsense Factory provides a deeply researched and witty examination of America's state of legal absurdity, concluding with sensible options for reform.
Our trial courts conduct hardly any trials, our correctional systems do not correct, and the rise of mandated arbitration has ushered in a shadowy system of privatized "justice." Meanwhile, our legislators can't even follow their own rules for making rules, while the rule of law mutates into a perpetual state of emergency. The legal system is becoming an incomprehensible farce. How did this happen?
In The Nonsense Factory , Bruce Cannon Gibney shows that over the past seventy years, the legal system has dangerously confused quantity with quality and might with legitimacy. As the law bloats into chaos, it staggers on only by excusing itself from the very commands it insists that we obey, leaving Americans at the mercy of arbitrary power. By examining the system as a whole, Gibney shows that the tragedies often portrayed as isolated mistakes or the work of bad actors -- police misconduct, prosecutorial overreach, and the outrages of imperial presidencies -- are really the inevitable consequences of law's descent into lawlessness.
The first book to deliver a lucid, comprehensive overview of the entire legal system, from the grandeur of Constitutional theory to the squalid workings of Congress, The Nonsense Factory provides a deeply researched and witty examination of America's state of legal absurdity, concluding with sensible options for reform.
544 pages, Hardcover
First published May 14, 2019
About the author
Bruce Cannon Gibney
2 books43 followersBruce Cannon Gibney is an American venture capitalist and author. He was one of the first investors at PayPal. His first book, A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America, was published by Hachette in 2015.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 7, 2022
The Nonsense Factory, Bruce Cannon Gibney, 2019, 504pp (379pp text) ISBN 9780316475266
Lots about what's wrong with U.S. law, from legal education to congress, courts, executive agencies, compulsory arbitration, and policing. It's a comprehensive catalog of failures in our legal system. Marred by author's focus on creating a world that would transfer wealth from the rest of us to himself even faster than it now does.
The changes the author /wants/ are those that would enrich venture capitalists such as himself. He wants laws changed to let him invest in law firms, without the inconvenience of himself practicing law. He wants to replace lawyers with artificial intelligence--which he says is better than lawyer intelligence. The point? He then can charge a corporate client $millions for milliseconds of processing time, rather than the same $millions for thousands of lawyer hours, for making minor modifications to a contract.
He mentions Social Security and Medicare, saying their funds are running out, so of course cuts will have to be made. (p. 377) The reality is, current benefits have always been paid for with current (or future) taxes—as is all of government. The author will never suggest taxing the few who have all the money.
The author's first suggestion for what to do about the sorry state of legal education: close one-third of the law schools! This would guarantee that no one could become a lawyer without wealthy parents, and would further remove access to legal assistance from the nonwealthy.
Admits that corporations spend over $3 billion per year lobbying Congress, and that they outspend public-interest groups and unions combined by 30-to-1. Yet, bizarrely, claims that corporations spend this $3 billion per year without getting much in return! saying only that lobbyists "sometimes" write laws. In fact, the return-on-investment from lobbying is almost infinite. For this $3 billion, corporations reap $ trillions in increased plunder. (pp. 97, 100, 102, 103)
Tells us Congressional leadership has arrogated outsized power to itself, leaving rank-and-file members mere yes-people. Then proposes that the number of Congressional representatives be vastly increased! (pp. 373¬–374) Leaving each one more insignificant still.
This author would not see that we need to officially empower and fund a public-interest research-and-lobbying group, on each and every issue that concentrated wealth lobbies on. These would be in the Citizens' Utility Board mold. State legislatures have outsourced utility rulemaking to Public Service Commissions. Utilities present their rate cases to the PSCs. The CUBs then show the PSCs why the utilities do NOT need such high rate increases. It works because CUB staff is knowledgeable, and genuinely committed to the public interest. And because CUBs receive government funding. (Wisconsin legislators of the everything-for-the-rich party recently drastically lowered CUB funding.) It works because PSCs haven't been completely captured by the industry they govern. CUB research and lobbying has the same hundreds-to-one return on investment that corporate lobbying has. A CUB with a tiny staff can save small ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars off the excess rates utilities wanted to charge, for a million dollars in CUB staff work. By contrast, a general-purpose representative of a geographic area can't hope to separate the truth from the lies and spin of lobbyists for hundreds of monied interests.
On /every/ issue concentrated wealth lobbies on, we the people /must/ hire a lobbyist.
https://www.theonion.com/american-peo...
Even in the agrarian 1700s, generic representatives of geographic areas served to further only the interests of the wealthy elite. The sort of representation we need is representation by a knowledgeable public-interest group /on each issue/.
The author stops short of suggesting forbidding A to sue B "for reasons A will discover as B gives A all possible information."
The author would never suggest putting lawyers under oath in court.
The author would strip agencies of all "judicial" powers! (p. 374) They might as well close, w/o power to enforce their rulings. They're already too timid to go to court much to fight the big boys.
The author wants government-lawyer pay increased to corporate-lawyer levels. (He'd never suggest anything that might reduce corporate-lawyer pay. Nor even more-progressive income taxes.) And of course he wants more subsidies for law students. But still elite pay for lawyers.
The author has a strange habit of invoking the name of an issue and saying /nothing/ descriptive about it. He spends a page on Ledbetter without saying a word describing the issue, nor the controversy, nor the Court decision, nor the dissent, nor what the law provided (p. 82). He drops James Traficant's name, telling us to google him! (p. 94) All he would've had to say was, "congressman James Traficant, imprisoned for corruption." But no. He wants us to google instead. C'mon. Tell us what it is you're /talking about/, without making us research it to find out.
The book's strength is its thorough catalog of failings of the U.S. legal system. The author's suggestions: no. Just no.
The book answers such questions as:
https://www.goodreads.com/trivia/work...
25 Britain & New Zealand have no written constitution.
30 Humanity's back always seems to ache for the royal lash.
35 jurisprude
39 "Natural law" (each one's own conception of it) was trumpeted by: Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, 18th-century revolutionaries such as Thomas Jefferson, Lon Fuller, John Finnis, MLK, & the KKK.
39 Idea of natural law rejected by: David Hume, Hitler, John Austin (28–29), authoritarians.
55 all major graduate-entrance exams have a math section /except/ the LSAT.
61 ukiyo
64 Law school and business school are only graduate programs where many professors teach something they've never done, or not done well.
71 One useless man = disgrace; 2 = law firm; 3+ = congress. —Peter Stone
82 a page on Ledbetter saying NOTHING about what the issue was nor what the Court decided, what the dissent was, or what the law provided.
94 "google for James Traficant. It's worth it."
97 claims staff write bills. ignores the extent to which lobbyists do.
100 corps outspend public-interest groups 30:1. $3B lobbying 2017.
Lobbyists know much more than the lobbied.
102 claims unusual for lobbyists to write laws! real: lobbyist wouldn't be doing his job w/o specifying exactly, in writing, what the interest-group wants the law to be.
103 lobbyists "sometimes" write laws.
103 quality of laws ranges from low to non-existent.
129 boil cake until tasty
135 judicial specimens
167–168 Alex Kozinski xxiv sexual harasser
188 furniture-usury case, former 1Ls
193 justice is open to all, like the Ritz hotel. —Sir James Matthew
200 $96,000 debt public law school; $134,000 private (+$150,000 opportunity cost)
201 govt lowers its costs by imposing an implicit tax on users of private legal services.
209 avg 5 million pages of documents produced per major case to trial 2010.
(1/1000 helpful enough to exhibit)
210 discovery costs as much as a case is worth.
211 American exceptionalism (Stalin, not flattery)
231 a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich. Sol Wachter.
262 if a cop follows you for 500 miles, you're going to get a ticket. —Warren Buffett
264 U.S. cops killed more people in first 24 days of 2015 than English and Welsh police killed in the last 24 years.
264 on a per-capita basis, /white/ Americans are killed by police at 26 times the rate of their German counterparts.
278 code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest surviving legal text
309 Hammurabi eye for eye
312 a prisoner-year in jail costs the state $210,000
313 lockups cost 2x federal HUD budget.
permalink:
https://www.worldcat.org/profiles/Tom...
Lots about what's wrong with U.S. law, from legal education to congress, courts, executive agencies, compulsory arbitration, and policing. It's a comprehensive catalog of failures in our legal system. Marred by author's focus on creating a world that would transfer wealth from the rest of us to himself even faster than it now does.
The changes the author /wants/ are those that would enrich venture capitalists such as himself. He wants laws changed to let him invest in law firms, without the inconvenience of himself practicing law. He wants to replace lawyers with artificial intelligence--which he says is better than lawyer intelligence. The point? He then can charge a corporate client $millions for milliseconds of processing time, rather than the same $millions for thousands of lawyer hours, for making minor modifications to a contract.
He mentions Social Security and Medicare, saying their funds are running out, so of course cuts will have to be made. (p. 377) The reality is, current benefits have always been paid for with current (or future) taxes—as is all of government. The author will never suggest taxing the few who have all the money.
The author's first suggestion for what to do about the sorry state of legal education: close one-third of the law schools! This would guarantee that no one could become a lawyer without wealthy parents, and would further remove access to legal assistance from the nonwealthy.
Admits that corporations spend over $3 billion per year lobbying Congress, and that they outspend public-interest groups and unions combined by 30-to-1. Yet, bizarrely, claims that corporations spend this $3 billion per year without getting much in return! saying only that lobbyists "sometimes" write laws. In fact, the return-on-investment from lobbying is almost infinite. For this $3 billion, corporations reap $ trillions in increased plunder. (pp. 97, 100, 102, 103)
Tells us Congressional leadership has arrogated outsized power to itself, leaving rank-and-file members mere yes-people. Then proposes that the number of Congressional representatives be vastly increased! (pp. 373¬–374) Leaving each one more insignificant still.
This author would not see that we need to officially empower and fund a public-interest research-and-lobbying group, on each and every issue that concentrated wealth lobbies on. These would be in the Citizens' Utility Board mold. State legislatures have outsourced utility rulemaking to Public Service Commissions. Utilities present their rate cases to the PSCs. The CUBs then show the PSCs why the utilities do NOT need such high rate increases. It works because CUB staff is knowledgeable, and genuinely committed to the public interest. And because CUBs receive government funding. (Wisconsin legislators of the everything-for-the-rich party recently drastically lowered CUB funding.) It works because PSCs haven't been completely captured by the industry they govern. CUB research and lobbying has the same hundreds-to-one return on investment that corporate lobbying has. A CUB with a tiny staff can save small ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars off the excess rates utilities wanted to charge, for a million dollars in CUB staff work. By contrast, a general-purpose representative of a geographic area can't hope to separate the truth from the lies and spin of lobbyists for hundreds of monied interests.
On /every/ issue concentrated wealth lobbies on, we the people /must/ hire a lobbyist.
https://www.theonion.com/american-peo...
Even in the agrarian 1700s, generic representatives of geographic areas served to further only the interests of the wealthy elite. The sort of representation we need is representation by a knowledgeable public-interest group /on each issue/.
The author stops short of suggesting forbidding A to sue B "for reasons A will discover as B gives A all possible information."
The author would never suggest putting lawyers under oath in court.
The author would strip agencies of all "judicial" powers! (p. 374) They might as well close, w/o power to enforce their rulings. They're already too timid to go to court much to fight the big boys.
The author wants government-lawyer pay increased to corporate-lawyer levels. (He'd never suggest anything that might reduce corporate-lawyer pay. Nor even more-progressive income taxes.) And of course he wants more subsidies for law students. But still elite pay for lawyers.
The author has a strange habit of invoking the name of an issue and saying /nothing/ descriptive about it. He spends a page on Ledbetter without saying a word describing the issue, nor the controversy, nor the Court decision, nor the dissent, nor what the law provided (p. 82). He drops James Traficant's name, telling us to google him! (p. 94) All he would've had to say was, "congressman James Traficant, imprisoned for corruption." But no. He wants us to google instead. C'mon. Tell us what it is you're /talking about/, without making us research it to find out.
The book's strength is its thorough catalog of failings of the U.S. legal system. The author's suggestions: no. Just no.
The book answers such questions as:
https://www.goodreads.com/trivia/work...
25 Britain & New Zealand have no written constitution.
30 Humanity's back always seems to ache for the royal lash.
35 jurisprude
39 "Natural law" (each one's own conception of it) was trumpeted by: Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, Grotius, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, 18th-century revolutionaries such as Thomas Jefferson, Lon Fuller, John Finnis, MLK, & the KKK.
39 Idea of natural law rejected by: David Hume, Hitler, John Austin (28–29), authoritarians.
55 all major graduate-entrance exams have a math section /except/ the LSAT.
61 ukiyo
64 Law school and business school are only graduate programs where many professors teach something they've never done, or not done well.
71 One useless man = disgrace; 2 = law firm; 3+ = congress. —Peter Stone
82 a page on Ledbetter saying NOTHING about what the issue was nor what the Court decided, what the dissent was, or what the law provided.
94 "google for James Traficant. It's worth it."
97 claims staff write bills. ignores the extent to which lobbyists do.
100 corps outspend public-interest groups 30:1. $3B lobbying 2017.
Lobbyists know much more than the lobbied.
102 claims unusual for lobbyists to write laws! real: lobbyist wouldn't be doing his job w/o specifying exactly, in writing, what the interest-group wants the law to be.
103 lobbyists "sometimes" write laws.
103 quality of laws ranges from low to non-existent.
129 boil cake until tasty
135 judicial specimens
167–168 Alex Kozinski xxiv sexual harasser
188 furniture-usury case, former 1Ls
193 justice is open to all, like the Ritz hotel. —Sir James Matthew
200 $96,000 debt public law school; $134,000 private (+$150,000 opportunity cost)
201 govt lowers its costs by imposing an implicit tax on users of private legal services.
209 avg 5 million pages of documents produced per major case to trial 2010.
(1/1000 helpful enough to exhibit)
210 discovery costs as much as a case is worth.
211 American exceptionalism (Stalin, not flattery)
231 a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich. Sol Wachter.
262 if a cop follows you for 500 miles, you're going to get a ticket. —Warren Buffett
264 U.S. cops killed more people in first 24 days of 2015 than English and Welsh police killed in the last 24 years.
264 on a per-capita basis, /white/ Americans are killed by police at 26 times the rate of their German counterparts.
278 code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest surviving legal text
309 Hammurabi eye for eye
312 a prisoner-year in jail costs the state $210,000
313 lockups cost 2x federal HUD budget.
permalink:
https://www.worldcat.org/profiles/Tom...
April 23, 2019
Alarming and Yet Also Hilarious. Even as someone who was once a political activist with some fairly high level (if State, rather than Federal) access to the halls of legislative deliberation, this book was pretty shocking in revealing just how much of a mess the American legal system truly is. While the author himself is clearly in favor of some form of ideal government that works, this book just as easily makes the case that anarchy would at least be preferable to the current system. Yet throughout, the author's acerbic wit is what makes the book such an enjoyable read - even as the critiques it makes show just how depressingly dreadful the current US legal system really is. Very much recommended reading. Just maybe try to do it in a place where plentiful alcohol is readily available. ;)
August 8, 2019
Interesting critique of US law because it looks into some less prominent but nevertheless important issues:
State immunity from civil suits: is it appropriate in a republic?
Bureaucratic regulation-writing and agency courts: do they unconstitutionally blur powers that ought to be separate?
Arbitration and plea-bargaining: is justice served by avoiding trials?
Congress: does the idea of legislative intent make sense coming from a legislature where most of the intellectual work is done by staff and lobbyists?
Legal costs: why have costs exploded and what is lost when legal counsel is increasingly beyond the reach of ordinary working people?
Judges: why do they not use their powers to get cases heard speedily and without allowing procedural games to become a war of attrition?
Law schools: does the case briefing method teach what lawyers need to be able to do in practice?
Etc.
Lots of facts and informed opinion without partisanship. Also, the writing is often snappy, ironic and frank, dispensing with myths like judges' claim that they are not legislators: developing common law is making the law!
The book portrays an American legal system that is overworked, unaffordable, and struggling to survive only by allowing its proper work to be offloaded to arbitrators, bureaucracies and prosecutors, as protections for your right to a fair hearing before and at trial in court are progressively eroded.
State immunity from civil suits: is it appropriate in a republic?
Bureaucratic regulation-writing and agency courts: do they unconstitutionally blur powers that ought to be separate?
Arbitration and plea-bargaining: is justice served by avoiding trials?
Congress: does the idea of legislative intent make sense coming from a legislature where most of the intellectual work is done by staff and lobbyists?
Legal costs: why have costs exploded and what is lost when legal counsel is increasingly beyond the reach of ordinary working people?
Judges: why do they not use their powers to get cases heard speedily and without allowing procedural games to become a war of attrition?
Law schools: does the case briefing method teach what lawyers need to be able to do in practice?
Etc.
Lots of facts and informed opinion without partisanship. Also, the writing is often snappy, ironic and frank, dispensing with myths like judges' claim that they are not legislators: developing common law is making the law!
The book portrays an American legal system that is overworked, unaffordable, and struggling to survive only by allowing its proper work to be offloaded to arbitrators, bureaucracies and prosecutors, as protections for your right to a fair hearing before and at trial in court are progressively eroded.
June 12, 2022
This book has a lot of interesting info on the American legal system, but it doesn’t always have enough background info. I didn't know that much about the legal system already, and some of the sections don’t make much sense given that. I read this with my husband, and he spent a lot of time looking things up as he went and then explaining them to me. Without him, I likely would have given up.
Gibney has an approach of throwing every complaint he can think of against the wall to see what sticks. For example, while listing everything he thinks is wrong with grand juries, and he brings up that there's a fairly low standard of proof to indict. But isn't that good? Being indicted doesn't mean you're guilty, just that the case goes to trial. I'm ready to be convinced, but Gibney doesn't exactly explain what he thinks is bad about it, except insofar as it's part of what he sees as a general problem of too many indictments.
Overall, my main complaint is that the book covers too many topics, with not enough depth on each. Also, some chapters were much more interesting than others, and they were actually ordered almost by decreasing interest (to me). So if you're reading this in order, and it starts out good but then goes downhill, maybe just bail at that point.
Gibney has an approach of throwing every complaint he can think of against the wall to see what sticks. For example, while listing everything he thinks is wrong with grand juries, and he brings up that there's a fairly low standard of proof to indict. But isn't that good? Being indicted doesn't mean you're guilty, just that the case goes to trial. I'm ready to be convinced, but Gibney doesn't exactly explain what he thinks is bad about it, except insofar as it's part of what he sees as a general problem of too many indictments.
Overall, my main complaint is that the book covers too many topics, with not enough depth on each. Also, some chapters were much more interesting than others, and they were actually ordered almost by decreasing interest (to me). So if you're reading this in order, and it starts out good but then goes downhill, maybe just bail at that point.
August 2, 2019
Over the past century, whole fields of [American] law have become so bloated and confused that not even a subset of their rules can be administered consistently. To cope, law modifies or ignores its own rules on the fly, and the entire legal system is backsliding toward a regime in which the arbitrary supplants the absolute.
The book is broken into chapters that span the entire legal system, from what’s wrong with law schools and legal journals, to the legislative flaws of an understaffed Congress that has amassed an irreconcilably complicated criminal code written by special interests, to the constitutional grey zone of “executive branch” agencies that also write their own rules and judge on compliance to them with limited due process, to the broken power dynamics between business and consumer created from arbitration rules, to the games played in litigation that drag out lawsuits and compound expense, to the myriad vagaries of criminal justice (that other books like New Jim Crow frankly cover better) such as perverse incentives of public prosecutors, under-trained judges, police abusing power, and unconstitutional practices in prisons. The final chapter explores the unitary executive that Alito and others pried open since the 1980s, which has been abused by every president since Reagan (none more so than Bush II, of course). Entire books can and are written about each topic, so this is really just a survey.
And like any survey-style book, the chapters that I found to be lacking (namely, the criminal justice and unitary executive ones) were probably so simply because I’d read other books devoted to the topic. However, topics I was less familiar with (e.g., the inner workings of Congress, arbitration, and law school) were absolutely fascinating, and are pushing me to find more books that dive deeper there. That the book was mostly consistent with what I’d read elsewhere is hopefully more an indication of its accuracy than my shared bias.
One good example relates to how lobbying influences government:
First, while lobbyists generally cannot affect major changes in the text of a law or its enactment, lobbyists can usually get officials to read statements into the record, allowing private actors to influence the legislative history that courts use to interpret laws. Simply reading a lobbyist’s gloss into the congressional record hardly seems like gross corruption, costs legislators virtually nothing, and if any political consequences arise, they’ll emerge years or decades after the fact, when the original parties are safely distant. Second, lobbyist influence on formal legislation – acts of congress – may be limited, but the influence on quasi law, like regulatory pronouncements, is much greater. Indeed, Congress sometimes requires bureaucrats to consider lobbyist input when making regulations.
Proposed solutions are sprinkled throughout, and Gibney has a nice, easy to quote summary in the conclusion of what should be done:
Law schools should teach students practical skills and receive appropriate public funding to reduce legal costs. Congress should expand its membership and staff so that it can fulfill its duties with something like minimal competence. Agencies should be relieved of quasi-judicial powers. The shoddy and untenable doctrines of compulsory arbitration should be undone. Correctional institutions should correct. Prosecutors should be bound by codes of ethics enforceable by the public and the courts. And doctrines of sovereign immunity should be re-interred in their 14th century graves... Statutes should be written clearly. Court opinions at the appellate or higher level digested by public services. And agency regulations written and posted in formats accessible to those affected.
Other wild ideas that show how close to breaking we are: “What would happen if a philanthropist subsidized public interest firms so that the share of defendants refusing [plea bargaining] rose from 5% to 15%? The criminal justice system would grind to a halt… Cook County (home to Chicago) has an annual public defense budget that barely approaches $80M”. Other simpler ideas include jury nullification and invoking Section 1983 in interaction with police.
July 22, 2020
A Book You Should Read
If you pay attention to the news at all, you have a feeling, most likely, that something is inherently flawed with our legal system, whether it's racial injustice as has been the focus lately or what we see of the legal system when called in for jury duty. If there's ever been that niggle (or more) in the back of your mind, this book takes a close and intense look at the entire legal system, from law schools to prosecutorial procedure to our prisons and other subjects as well. The flaws that you suspect are only the tip of the iceberg according to the author, and he makes his case well. This can be a bit of a dense read, best taken in small doses and reflected upon. What he says makes sense and is more than a little disturbing. You’ll want sweeping legal reform, although it is not easy to see how that can be done with the current system so invested in keeping the status quo. While the writing is information packed, you do get a sense of the author’s wit—even when discussing such a complex and important issue—which makes the reading a little easier. I appreciate his measured, non-partisan tone that never borders on ranting, even though his take on the subject could warrant it. Highly recommended.
I received a free copy of this book, but that did not affect my review.
My book blog: https://www.readingfanaticreviews.com
If you pay attention to the news at all, you have a feeling, most likely, that something is inherently flawed with our legal system, whether it's racial injustice as has been the focus lately or what we see of the legal system when called in for jury duty. If there's ever been that niggle (or more) in the back of your mind, this book takes a close and intense look at the entire legal system, from law schools to prosecutorial procedure to our prisons and other subjects as well. The flaws that you suspect are only the tip of the iceberg according to the author, and he makes his case well. This can be a bit of a dense read, best taken in small doses and reflected upon. What he says makes sense and is more than a little disturbing. You’ll want sweeping legal reform, although it is not easy to see how that can be done with the current system so invested in keeping the status quo. While the writing is information packed, you do get a sense of the author’s wit—even when discussing such a complex and important issue—which makes the reading a little easier. I appreciate his measured, non-partisan tone that never borders on ranting, even though his take on the subject could warrant it. Highly recommended.
I received a free copy of this book, but that did not affect my review.
My book blog: https://www.readingfanaticreviews.com
January 15, 2024
Really into books about failures of our society that no one cares about even though they’re plain to see ATM. This hits the nail on the head. We’re surrounded by unconstitutionality and injustice, and it has nothing to do with the alligator tears you’ll see falling on cable news. An essential read for anyone interested in the carceral state or law in general.
September 11, 2019
"To understand law in trivial terms, as a mere instrument to oppress and exploit, or a transient artifact of capitalist evolution, does society a disservice. The purpose of law is not to add a civilized veneer to the whims of the powerful; law helps save us from that. Law also maximizes our ability to create while protecting others from our creations. Law can be tiresome, of course, just like flossing and cardio days, but like these chores it has greater purpose." (2)
The Nonsense Factory is nothing if not well-written. Despite working in the trenches myself, I found myself eager to read Gibney's survey of the American legal system, a system Gibney believes is short on Rule of Law and long on despotic whims (said despotism a unilateral force employed by the elected, the appointed, and the bureaucracies alike). Gibney is a witty author, adept at analogy and explaining complicated systems and procedures. In his survey, he analyzes the value of law, the costs of law school and their corresponding effect on markets, the legislature, bureaucratic committees, civil courts, the police, and more. I found the chapters on legal theory, law school, and the legislature to be very interesting and a foray into a subject I had not previously considered. I found myself in disagreement with some of his conclusions, and many of his claims surrounding law enforcement, but was invested in his opinion nonetheless.
Gibney's central claim is that the legal actors ought to justify their actions to the people, as opposed to the people making justifications for legal actors after-the-fact. Gibney asserts that American society has been predicated on the latter for the past century, resulting in bureaucratic bloat, executive overreach, and an erosion of justice. Justice requires the Rule of Law, which is fixed law of general application in which (a) everyone (b) is bound by laws (c) of general application (d) as applied by ordinary courts. Seems commonsensical, right?
Gibney asserts that justice is not found in either civil or criminal courts. Justice is absent in the civil hemisphere because of exorbitant cost, the inefficacy of our governing legislative body, overabundant arbitration clauses, and general complexity. Justice is absent in the criminal hemisphere because of precedent, unjust rules of evidence, prosecutorial and law enforcement discretion, and lackadaisical judicial proceedings. Throughout the book, Gibney provides a variety of solutions, ranging from feasible (know your damn rights and articulate them when appropriate, the government should be transparent throughout a decision-making process) to maybe-not-feasible (constitutional amendments, making law firms public, making the government much bigger).
In my assessment, Gibney is correct that several things must change. There is no room in a Constitutional society for forced arbitration, asset forfeiture, and executive authority under the guise of "states of emergency". Legal representation ought be available at a more reasonable rates for the reasonable situations in which folks find themselves (divorce proceedings, child custody, minor criminal issues). The codes by which we are expected to live (tax codes, criminal codes, building codes) ought be written plainly and available publicly for the benefit of society as opposed to the government itself.
Gibney's opinions are not without shortcomings. He glosses over some very big issues, to include:
1. What are we, as a society, to do with the indigent and mentally ill considering they deserve protection, yet are a drain on nearly every resource in existence?
2. How are we to bolster our governing bodies (legislatures, legislative assistants, the police, the courts) to ensure fairness without contributing to resource misallocation?
3. How should we feel about discretion, whether it be a Judge or a Police Officer?
4. Shouldn't the American public shoulder some responsibility for the police being the police? (Gibney says it himself: "America has a lot of cops with a lot of weapons, and no firm consensus about what the police mission is or what oversight is required. The police carry some - but only some - of the blame. Society calls upon cops to be social workers, assault teams, regulatory wardens, detectives, and civic ombudsmen - a clearly unviable combination. But rather than clarify police missions, or subject departments to accountability, government resorts to the tactics of the absentee parent, offering goodies like tanks and immunity." 245) [And that's to say nothing of bias and oppressiveness on the part of law enforcement being an extension of the public's desire to strong-arm another to conforming to their own lifestyle.]
Gibney's understanding of the police is, to say the least, naive. Gibney decries that some members of society with a criminal history are hired as police officers, yet in an earlier chapter about prosecutors he's upset that there are so many convictions and stacked charges. He alleges that "most crimes are not detected by police on patrol", which seemingly flies in the face of DUI enforcement, warrant arrests, and other proactive activity which are known to result in arrests (not to mention it suggests police should be omnipresent throughout society). Most notably, Gibney is harsh on police for low clearance rates, which is a claim he uses to prove the inefficacy of criminal justice in general. He fails to address victim accountability, however. Many victims lack the necessary information (serial numbers, security footage, functional victim statements, accurate time frames, securing their own property in the first place) to even begin an investigation, and many times they refuse to cooperate in pressing charges (for a variety of reasons: maybe they got their money back, maybe the suspect was a juvenile, maybe they don't want to go to court, etc.). Elsewhere in the chapter, Gibney throws out assault statistics which don't account for the totality of the circumstances, and he cites Michael Brown as an example of biased policing which is simply incendiary (Ferguson Police Department is guilty, but Darren Wilson is not, per the Department of Justice under Obama and a grand jury of our peers).
Relating back to #3 listed above, I'm not sure where Gibney stands on discretion. He acknowledges that universal application of laws is undesirable and worse than the problem it is meant to fix; however, he doesn't like that judges, prosecutors, and police get to make decisions for reasons they are not required to share. Because of his bad faith attitude towards the majority of the aforementioned personnel, he seems to want to take away discretion but doesn't articulate what that would look like. My guess is he wants a legal Übermensch with unlimited funding and time to be able to ruminate, decide, and explicate. Unfortunately for Gibney, scarcity is an economic and realistic phenomenon which must be reckoned with, and which does little to combat our already well-established human fallibility.
So Gibney laments about a lack of justice on the offensive side. But what about the lack of justice on the defensive side? Look no further than Hon. Byron White's concurring and dissenting opinion in US v. Wade 388 U.S. 218 (1967):
TL;DR: Don't worry about pesky moral concerns or the limitations placed upon us by proceeding, decorum, or trying to sleep at night. Defense attorneys seek to win, whether or not winning has any relation to the truth of things.
What is more, one must remember that Gibney is an investor, and was a lawyer for the briefest of time. Maybe it gives him a position of advantage as an outsider's insider (as he claims in the introduction), or maybe it gives him a position as intelligent and wealthy outsider who pushes for change so he can make additional investments. I have no opinion on these positions, but they are worth noting.
In sum, The Nonsense Factory is a good book. It's a good book for any young adult interested in civil law, criminal law, or becoming a lawyer, and it's an even better book for those currently unacquainted with the law who are destined to meet it. It introduces many essential legal topics, and is a good primer for anyone interested in a survey of legal realities in American society. Though not without its flaws, it is a well-written book that is funny and makes nearly 400 pages of straight analysis quite enjoyable.
The Nonsense Factory is nothing if not well-written. Despite working in the trenches myself, I found myself eager to read Gibney's survey of the American legal system, a system Gibney believes is short on Rule of Law and long on despotic whims (said despotism a unilateral force employed by the elected, the appointed, and the bureaucracies alike). Gibney is a witty author, adept at analogy and explaining complicated systems and procedures. In his survey, he analyzes the value of law, the costs of law school and their corresponding effect on markets, the legislature, bureaucratic committees, civil courts, the police, and more. I found the chapters on legal theory, law school, and the legislature to be very interesting and a foray into a subject I had not previously considered. I found myself in disagreement with some of his conclusions, and many of his claims surrounding law enforcement, but was invested in his opinion nonetheless.
Gibney's central claim is that the legal actors ought to justify their actions to the people, as opposed to the people making justifications for legal actors after-the-fact. Gibney asserts that American society has been predicated on the latter for the past century, resulting in bureaucratic bloat, executive overreach, and an erosion of justice. Justice requires the Rule of Law, which is fixed law of general application in which (a) everyone (b) is bound by laws (c) of general application (d) as applied by ordinary courts. Seems commonsensical, right?
Gibney asserts that justice is not found in either civil or criminal courts. Justice is absent in the civil hemisphere because of exorbitant cost, the inefficacy of our governing legislative body, overabundant arbitration clauses, and general complexity. Justice is absent in the criminal hemisphere because of precedent, unjust rules of evidence, prosecutorial and law enforcement discretion, and lackadaisical judicial proceedings. Throughout the book, Gibney provides a variety of solutions, ranging from feasible (know your damn rights and articulate them when appropriate, the government should be transparent throughout a decision-making process) to maybe-not-feasible (constitutional amendments, making law firms public, making the government much bigger).
In my assessment, Gibney is correct that several things must change. There is no room in a Constitutional society for forced arbitration, asset forfeiture, and executive authority under the guise of "states of emergency". Legal representation ought be available at a more reasonable rates for the reasonable situations in which folks find themselves (divorce proceedings, child custody, minor criminal issues). The codes by which we are expected to live (tax codes, criminal codes, building codes) ought be written plainly and available publicly for the benefit of society as opposed to the government itself.
Gibney's opinions are not without shortcomings. He glosses over some very big issues, to include:
1. What are we, as a society, to do with the indigent and mentally ill considering they deserve protection, yet are a drain on nearly every resource in existence?
2. How are we to bolster our governing bodies (legislatures, legislative assistants, the police, the courts) to ensure fairness without contributing to resource misallocation?
3. How should we feel about discretion, whether it be a Judge or a Police Officer?
4. Shouldn't the American public shoulder some responsibility for the police being the police? (Gibney says it himself: "America has a lot of cops with a lot of weapons, and no firm consensus about what the police mission is or what oversight is required. The police carry some - but only some - of the blame. Society calls upon cops to be social workers, assault teams, regulatory wardens, detectives, and civic ombudsmen - a clearly unviable combination. But rather than clarify police missions, or subject departments to accountability, government resorts to the tactics of the absentee parent, offering goodies like tanks and immunity." 245) [And that's to say nothing of bias and oppressiveness on the part of law enforcement being an extension of the public's desire to strong-arm another to conforming to their own lifestyle.]
Gibney's understanding of the police is, to say the least, naive. Gibney decries that some members of society with a criminal history are hired as police officers, yet in an earlier chapter about prosecutors he's upset that there are so many convictions and stacked charges. He alleges that "most crimes are not detected by police on patrol", which seemingly flies in the face of DUI enforcement, warrant arrests, and other proactive activity which are known to result in arrests (not to mention it suggests police should be omnipresent throughout society). Most notably, Gibney is harsh on police for low clearance rates, which is a claim he uses to prove the inefficacy of criminal justice in general. He fails to address victim accountability, however. Many victims lack the necessary information (serial numbers, security footage, functional victim statements, accurate time frames, securing their own property in the first place) to even begin an investigation, and many times they refuse to cooperate in pressing charges (for a variety of reasons: maybe they got their money back, maybe the suspect was a juvenile, maybe they don't want to go to court, etc.). Elsewhere in the chapter, Gibney throws out assault statistics which don't account for the totality of the circumstances, and he cites Michael Brown as an example of biased policing which is simply incendiary (Ferguson Police Department is guilty, but Darren Wilson is not, per the Department of Justice under Obama and a grand jury of our peers).
Relating back to #3 listed above, I'm not sure where Gibney stands on discretion. He acknowledges that universal application of laws is undesirable and worse than the problem it is meant to fix; however, he doesn't like that judges, prosecutors, and police get to make decisions for reasons they are not required to share. Because of his bad faith attitude towards the majority of the aforementioned personnel, he seems to want to take away discretion but doesn't articulate what that would look like. My guess is he wants a legal Übermensch with unlimited funding and time to be able to ruminate, decide, and explicate. Unfortunately for Gibney, scarcity is an economic and realistic phenomenon which must be reckoned with, and which does little to combat our already well-established human fallibility.
So Gibney laments about a lack of justice on the offensive side. But what about the lack of justice on the defensive side? Look no further than Hon. Byron White's concurring and dissenting opinion in US v. Wade 388 U.S. 218 (1967):
Undoubtedly there are some limits which defense counsel must observe, but, more often than not, defense counsel will cross-examine a prosecution witness, and impeach him if he can, even if he thinks the witness is telling the truth, just as he will attempt to destroy a witness who he thinks is lying. In this respect, as part of our modified adversary system and as part of the duty imposed on the most honorable defense counsel, we countenance or require conduct which, in many instances, has little, if any, relation to the search for truth.
TL;DR: Don't worry about pesky moral concerns or the limitations placed upon us by proceeding, decorum, or trying to sleep at night. Defense attorneys seek to win, whether or not winning has any relation to the truth of things.
What is more, one must remember that Gibney is an investor, and was a lawyer for the briefest of time. Maybe it gives him a position of advantage as an outsider's insider (as he claims in the introduction), or maybe it gives him a position as intelligent and wealthy outsider who pushes for change so he can make additional investments. I have no opinion on these positions, but they are worth noting.
In sum, The Nonsense Factory is a good book. It's a good book for any young adult interested in civil law, criminal law, or becoming a lawyer, and it's an even better book for those currently unacquainted with the law who are destined to meet it. It introduces many essential legal topics, and is a good primer for anyone interested in a survey of legal realities in American society. Though not without its flaws, it is a well-written book that is funny and makes nearly 400 pages of straight analysis quite enjoyable.
March 26, 2019
Thank you Netgalley and Hachette Press for an ARC Copy of The Nonsense Factory: The Making and Breaking of the American Legal System. Here is my honest review:
Gibney takes on a towering task in examining the entire legal system and then adroitly rips it down at the foundation brick by brick and does so with wit and rumination. It will be hard to pledge allegiance without a little smirk when you finish.
Monster problems require monster solutions and Gibney provides some interesting ones, but other subjects are left more unraveled without much mending hope. His idea to get rid of the bottom tier of law schools, while being extremely unrealistic (these schools are profit-machines, after all), was the most interesting idea and one I found myself agreeing with after initially raising an eyebrow.
This should appeal to anyone interesting in why things aren't working in our legal system. The writing is about as non-partisan and objective as you can expect.
#Netgalley #TheNonsenseFactory
Gibney takes on a towering task in examining the entire legal system and then adroitly rips it down at the foundation brick by brick and does so with wit and rumination. It will be hard to pledge allegiance without a little smirk when you finish.
Monster problems require monster solutions and Gibney provides some interesting ones, but other subjects are left more unraveled without much mending hope. His idea to get rid of the bottom tier of law schools, while being extremely unrealistic (these schools are profit-machines, after all), was the most interesting idea and one I found myself agreeing with after initially raising an eyebrow.
This should appeal to anyone interesting in why things aren't working in our legal system. The writing is about as non-partisan and objective as you can expect.
#Netgalley #TheNonsenseFactory
October 14, 2019
Fantastic critique of the American legal system - in the process, breaking down nearly every element of the legal process (e.g. jurisprudence / rule of law, law school, evidence standards, every branch of government, private arbitration, and so on). This content by default is dry and complicated, but this author brings it to life through searing criticism of everywhere law fails its citizens - creating a very-digestible overview of law with an entertaining narrative voice.
The basic gist of this book is that law isn’t an immutable force - it’s an organic set of ideas that can change over time, whether through overworked / ill-informed lawmakers and bureaucrats, the arbitrary discretion of judges, or the consensus of the public-at-large on law’s validity. There’s no guarantee that law will improve, or even stay static, over time, and the author argues that we’ve actually regressed in several areas. Note: I have zero background in this topic, so am not familiar with the major counter-arguments here.
“If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.” The author goes chapter-by-chapter through major legal topics in a steady cadence of overview, critique, and proposed solutions to make law more respectable. A lot of ground was covered in the book, and I definitely didn’t retain as much as I’d like. So I’m including a quick Spark Notes overview for myself below:
Purpose of law: large-scale coordination, efficiency, accountability, and the ‘rule of law’ (impartial, fair, consistent application of legal code).
Legal code: should be clear, but is instead a patchwork of document updates over time that are practically impossible to keep straight, augmented by countless judicial opinions and interpretations
Law school: there are too many, and different tiers of legal education (akin to doctors / nurses) would give more diversity to the system. It’s far too expensive (which bleeds into high legal costs in general), and focuses too much on theory vs. application.
Congress: too small / ill-equipped to actually manage an immensely more complex world, depends on lobbying to fill the gaps
Government agencies / bureaucracies: fundamentally shaky from a Constitutional standpoint, blending powers that are supposed to be separated. Mandates should be made clearer via law.
Judges: tenure dictates court management, not efficient operation. Age and lack of diversity leave judges disconnected from current realities.
Arbitration: forced contractual arbitration for consumers benefits large corporations at the expense of the individual - and arbitration in general has privatized a major chunk of legal activity into a venue that is less transparent / accountable.
Legal costs: far too high, increasing much faster than general inflation. Starts from expensive law school, but is compounded by other factors. Expensive private industries sometimes ‘subsidize’ public law - government workers are OK being paid less with the expectation of major payouts when going private later.
Prosecutors: far too much discretionary power, lots of incentives to focus on conviction vs. justice. Public defenders get nowhere near as much funding.
Police: the ratio of violence vs results is terrible compared with other countries (even after normalizing crime rates)
Evidence: legal fact doesn’t always mirror reality, which is sometimes ok (not accepting evidence acquired by unwarranted seizure helps broad social policy, if not the individual case). Acceptance though is often discretionary / biased. Witnesses have terrible memories.
Punishment: lots of things wrong with prison, probation, bail, civil remedies, etc
Executive branch: far too powerful, minimal checks on authority.
The basic gist of this book is that law isn’t an immutable force - it’s an organic set of ideas that can change over time, whether through overworked / ill-informed lawmakers and bureaucrats, the arbitrary discretion of judges, or the consensus of the public-at-large on law’s validity. There’s no guarantee that law will improve, or even stay static, over time, and the author argues that we’ve actually regressed in several areas. Note: I have zero background in this topic, so am not familiar with the major counter-arguments here.
“If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.” The author goes chapter-by-chapter through major legal topics in a steady cadence of overview, critique, and proposed solutions to make law more respectable. A lot of ground was covered in the book, and I definitely didn’t retain as much as I’d like. So I’m including a quick Spark Notes overview for myself below:
Purpose of law: large-scale coordination, efficiency, accountability, and the ‘rule of law’ (impartial, fair, consistent application of legal code).
Legal code: should be clear, but is instead a patchwork of document updates over time that are practically impossible to keep straight, augmented by countless judicial opinions and interpretations
Law school: there are too many, and different tiers of legal education (akin to doctors / nurses) would give more diversity to the system. It’s far too expensive (which bleeds into high legal costs in general), and focuses too much on theory vs. application.
Congress: too small / ill-equipped to actually manage an immensely more complex world, depends on lobbying to fill the gaps
Government agencies / bureaucracies: fundamentally shaky from a Constitutional standpoint, blending powers that are supposed to be separated. Mandates should be made clearer via law.
Judges: tenure dictates court management, not efficient operation. Age and lack of diversity leave judges disconnected from current realities.
Arbitration: forced contractual arbitration for consumers benefits large corporations at the expense of the individual - and arbitration in general has privatized a major chunk of legal activity into a venue that is less transparent / accountable.
Legal costs: far too high, increasing much faster than general inflation. Starts from expensive law school, but is compounded by other factors. Expensive private industries sometimes ‘subsidize’ public law - government workers are OK being paid less with the expectation of major payouts when going private later.
Prosecutors: far too much discretionary power, lots of incentives to focus on conviction vs. justice. Public defenders get nowhere near as much funding.
Police: the ratio of violence vs results is terrible compared with other countries (even after normalizing crime rates)
Evidence: legal fact doesn’t always mirror reality, which is sometimes ok (not accepting evidence acquired by unwarranted seizure helps broad social policy, if not the individual case). Acceptance though is often discretionary / biased. Witnesses have terrible memories.
Punishment: lots of things wrong with prison, probation, bail, civil remedies, etc
Executive branch: far too powerful, minimal checks on authority.
August 31, 2019
I enjoyed Mr. Gibney's first book, A Generation of Psychopaths, about how the baby boomers have messed things up, so I was eager to pick up this book about how the legal system has messed things up.
It does not disappoint.
According to the author, our legal system is a huge, unwieldy and expensive mess, and a lot of the people who run it are given too much power without any real accountability.
- Congressmen who write the laws don't bother to read what they vote on anymore because their jobs have become too overwhelming, counting on staffers and lobbyists to tell them what to do. Lobbyists spend over $30 billion every year buying influence, and the deck is stacked in big business's favor, 30:1. Congress also tends to avoid any kind of real changes, depending on the president and courts to keep things running.
- Bureaucrats who interpret, apply and enforce the laws are a shadow branch of government not accountable to the people they serve.
- Judges who enforce the laws are not always trained in law and with lifetime tenure not always able to handle the pressures of the job as they age. Their appointments and elections are political and their rulings not always consistent.
- Prosecutors have enormous discretion on what laws they can enforce, depending on public pressures and their own beliefs. With thousands of state and federal statutes, no one knows what the crimes all are. A stunning 96% of prosecutions end up in plea bargains according to this book, and jury trials, while supposedly guaranteed by Miranda, are exceedingly rare these days.
- Police have the power of the state behind them and a lot of discretion about who to stop and when. Racial profiling is a huge problem that results in uneven enforcement of the laws.
- Arbitrators are a secretive court of private justice that almost all of us are bound to by our employers and financial services. These quasi-judges are not always well-trained and their proceedings are confidential, so no one knows what any of the disputes are about. Class-action arbitration is usually impossible, making this avenue not economical for small judgements.
In addition, Gibney roasts law schools, saying they are too expensive, too based in theory, and that they churn out too many graduates, a large percentage of whom can't pass the bar exam or become employed. Because of this expensive legal education, lawyers charge $200/hour and up legal billings, leading to a $260-$440 Billion dollar price tag to all of us, mostly passed on in taxes and costs of living.
Evidence in reality is little like it is portrayed in tv cop shows. Things like fingerprints, facial recognition, fiber analysis, DNA, and witnesses are all flawed and can only present a range of probability that they point in one direction. The best evidence today is live video, but that can't show everything either.
The author goes through our detention system, from prisons to jails to probation, and our record of recidivism is worse than most European countries. Plus the failed war on drugs has overloaded our prisons so that we have the highest per capital prison population in the world.
The chapter on what we can do about all this is depressingly short of details, other than to rely on the public to vote in better legislators and judges. There are some better examples of criminal justice systems out there, and at some point it would make American a better place if we could learn from them.
One final tip- if a policeman starts harassing you unfairly in your opinion, bring up section 1983 and it may stop his or her behavior. That takes it up several levels.
All in all, a good and informative book.
It does not disappoint.
According to the author, our legal system is a huge, unwieldy and expensive mess, and a lot of the people who run it are given too much power without any real accountability.
- Congressmen who write the laws don't bother to read what they vote on anymore because their jobs have become too overwhelming, counting on staffers and lobbyists to tell them what to do. Lobbyists spend over $30 billion every year buying influence, and the deck is stacked in big business's favor, 30:1. Congress also tends to avoid any kind of real changes, depending on the president and courts to keep things running.
- Bureaucrats who interpret, apply and enforce the laws are a shadow branch of government not accountable to the people they serve.
- Judges who enforce the laws are not always trained in law and with lifetime tenure not always able to handle the pressures of the job as they age. Their appointments and elections are political and their rulings not always consistent.
- Prosecutors have enormous discretion on what laws they can enforce, depending on public pressures and their own beliefs. With thousands of state and federal statutes, no one knows what the crimes all are. A stunning 96% of prosecutions end up in plea bargains according to this book, and jury trials, while supposedly guaranteed by Miranda, are exceedingly rare these days.
- Police have the power of the state behind them and a lot of discretion about who to stop and when. Racial profiling is a huge problem that results in uneven enforcement of the laws.
- Arbitrators are a secretive court of private justice that almost all of us are bound to by our employers and financial services. These quasi-judges are not always well-trained and their proceedings are confidential, so no one knows what any of the disputes are about. Class-action arbitration is usually impossible, making this avenue not economical for small judgements.
In addition, Gibney roasts law schools, saying they are too expensive, too based in theory, and that they churn out too many graduates, a large percentage of whom can't pass the bar exam or become employed. Because of this expensive legal education, lawyers charge $200/hour and up legal billings, leading to a $260-$440 Billion dollar price tag to all of us, mostly passed on in taxes and costs of living.
Evidence in reality is little like it is portrayed in tv cop shows. Things like fingerprints, facial recognition, fiber analysis, DNA, and witnesses are all flawed and can only present a range of probability that they point in one direction. The best evidence today is live video, but that can't show everything either.
The author goes through our detention system, from prisons to jails to probation, and our record of recidivism is worse than most European countries. Plus the failed war on drugs has overloaded our prisons so that we have the highest per capital prison population in the world.
The chapter on what we can do about all this is depressingly short of details, other than to rely on the public to vote in better legislators and judges. There are some better examples of criminal justice systems out there, and at some point it would make American a better place if we could learn from them.
One final tip- if a policeman starts harassing you unfairly in your opinion, bring up section 1983 and it may stop his or her behavior. That takes it up several levels.
All in all, a good and informative book.
October 2, 2019
It is a thick book that consists of piling up all the nonsense found in how we produce and maintain our legal system. There is a LOT of nonsense and as I sifted through Gibney's pile I found things that entertained. Some well chosen statistics to illustrate his points. I found his prose to be pithy and well informed. Yet, somehow, I didn't find this to be a very satisfying indictment of the system. It just seemed to be rehashing old ground and offering up critiques that have been made elsewhere with more depth or with more freshness. There is no doubt that there is a lot of nonsense in the law--or in any human social institution--and that this has been true for as long as mankind has been trying to create and enforce rule by law--Just look at the trial of Socrates or Christ's before Pontius Pilate, or the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden. It has been stuff and nonsense from the beginning, and yet society goes on and the struggle for just and fair governance goes on despite all that nonsense. The book just doesn't seem to bring its critique to a boil. I'm not saying there isn't a lot here to recommend the book, but the whole enterprise fails to take flight--at least for me.
August 18, 2019
Everyone who cares about democracy in America needs to read this!
January 28, 2020
This book left me daydreaming of a Bernie Sanders presidency, though I'm certain this was not the author's intended effect.
December 29, 2021
Once again, Gibney puts forward a sobering and daunting manifesto of a looming problem in America that is not publicly discussed as it should. This book was very informative, dense, witty, and upsetting to read. About the internal flaws and historical curiosities of the American legal system. He objectively examines from the history and philosophy of law to the small to large sections of the legal world and how it affects the general public in insidious ways. The take away is that from our police up to the president do not operate in accordance with law where average citizens have no fair chance at justice and our country no longer operates in a way that would benefit us logically. Gibney does use high brow and complex language to make his points but this book can be understood by anyone with a general understanding of the English language at a basic knowledge of how America government should operate. I found many points in this book both eye opening and depressing. It makes me hold a more critical eye to the legal system and all it's insane problems. It hope for improvements as well as more phenomenal writing from Gibney.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews