num_pages: 544
description: 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.
language: English
title: The Nonsense Factory: The Making and Breaking of the American Legal System
publisher: Hachette Books