Book Review: The Law Says What? Stuff You Didn’t Know About the Law (but Really Should) by Maclen Stanley

About:

The Law Says What? Stuff You Didn’t Know About the Law (but Really Should) by Maclen Stanley is a quick primer about the US legal system. Mr. Stanley is a Harvard Law School graduates, and owns his own firm.

• 189 pages
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ TCK Publishing
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1631611178

My rating for The Law Says What? – 5
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Thoughts:

As a political junky and someone who attempts to be informed, this book was right up my alley. The Law Says What? Stuff You Didn’t Know About the Law (but Really Should) by Maclen Stanley is informative, as it is entertaining.

Mr. Stanley has managed to simplify legal concepts, give examples and source them as well. Not surprisingly, many of the laws are contradictory, or convoluted. For example, marijuana is both legal and illegal, depends on where you live and what you’re charged with.

The old adage is that in order to play in the system, you need to know the rules. While certainly you’re not going to get a degree, you will certainly be more informed after reading this book.

The author gives a lot of examples, some known, but many lesser-known ones. Furthermore, many of the high-profile cases are not as straight forward as we think they are. This, of course, has more to do with people’s disdain of nuances, and the enthusiastic embrace of fake outrage bullet points.

I found much of the book interesting, even about the parts I disagree with. For example, Mr. Stanley makes the case for Civil Asset Forfeiture, an aspect which is important to understand, yet entirely incomprehensible to me that it actually exists. As always, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and this aspect of the legal system has been abused to the point of absurdity.
Not to worry though, if your assets are taken and they are found to be not guilty, you’ll get 80% of it back.

This is just one aspect of the book which is both enjoyable and infuriating, even if the author dislikes the best ice-cream flavor around (rum raisin). To be fair, enjoyable and infuriating are many aspects of living in this world.

Buy The Law Says What? from Amazon.com*
More books by Maclen Stanley*

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I got this book for free.
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account