Joshua Glasgow’s Reviews > The Nonsense Factory: The Making and Breaking of the American Legal System > Status Update

Everything about our legal system is so beyond fucked up and unconscionable. Gibney makes the point repeatedly: aren’t these the things the Founders fought a war to escape? Yet here we sit, tolerating a regime 100x worse. I’m not talking about Trump—I’m talking about the whole enterprise. Trump is just the symptom that finally makes you go to the doctor where you learn your whole body is riddled with cancer.

Am I back into reading after a lengthy slowdown? A: Possibly? Time will tell.

2 months in, I’m finally past the halfway mark. This book really is exactly what I enjoy reading and I think it’s very, very good. The only explanation I have for why I’m struggling to read it is the endnotes. I get why they’re necessary, but they destroy the flow of the read and mostly add nothing substantive. But I can’t just ignore them. What if there’s additional commentary? So I check every one. 😩

Finished the chapter on Congress and, yep, it’s a joke. Interested to see what Gibney’s advice is for us other than “start over from scratch”. Things is completely off the rails at this point, across the board.

I’m in a chapter about how American law schools are utter failures at preparing students for the actual practice of law and costs are soaring so much that it is destroying access to practitioners for most people. I don’t disagree with any of this, but I feel like I didn’t need a whole chapter on it. Feels like it’s taking a bit away from the discussion about the “system” as a whole.

Several piercing quotes, too lengthy to share here, but offering examples of how incomprehensible and illegitimate much of American law is. I’m absolutely happy with this read. It’s in line with what I was seeking. I need more like this on my WTRs.

So far it’s exactly what I hoped it would be. Both a little more informal and a little more formal in its writing style than USUAL CRUELTY, I’m not sure I like it quite as much, but it’s still hitting its points and I’m copying quote after quote, even though I’ve really only read the preface and introduction so far.