What do America's laws say about who we are?
In Bad Laws: How Legal History Reveals the American Character, Leslie Juvin-Acker, J.D., peels back the layers of American legal history to expose a truth as uncomfortable as it is undeniable: our laws are mirrors reflecting our collective beliefs, values, and fears. Each statute, each judicial decision, each policy-whether written in the age of slavery or in the modern era of surveillance and corporate dominance-reveals the moral DNA of the nation.
Written in exile after fleeing the United States on the eve of its authoritarian unraveling, Juvin-Acker's work is both a personal testimony and a sweeping legal and moral analysis. With the precision of a lawyer and the empathy of a philosopher, she traces how the American legal system has alternated between protecting liberty and legitimizing exploitation. From the founding documents to modern deregulation and disinformation, Bad Laws exposes how bad ideas become bad laws-and how those laws, in turn, shape a divided and unequal society.
Inside, readers will explore:
- How American legal history reflects national beliefs, fears, and contradictions
- How bad ideas become bad laws-and how laws shape culture in return
- How power, inequality, propaganda, and deregulation appear across legal systems
- How law touches work, education, healthcare, gender, race, and self-government
- How legal literacy can become a tool for civic courage and moral clarity
Through accessible essays spanning fourteen areas of law, Juvin-Acker empowers readers with legal literacy-the most practical form of resistance in an age of propaganda and political corruption. She reveals how law touches every facet of daily life: work, education, healthcare, gender, race, and even the right to self-govern. And she issues a moral challenge: to look into the nation's mirror and decide whether we are the people who uphold injustice-or the ones who dismantle it.
A bold synthesis of history, law, philosophy, and civic courage, Bad Laws invites every reader to question the beliefs that built America's institutions, to understand the mechanics of inequality, and to reclaim the moral and democratic inheritance promised in the Declaration of Independence.
Equal justice is not a gift of the powerful. It is the birthright of every American.
This book shows you how to claim it.
