I don't know that it was intended to assert or enumerate that as a literal statement? Seems like it was only trying to suggest that our code of laws is such tha

I don't know that it was intended to assert or enumerate that as a literal statement? Seems like it was only trying to suggest that our code of laws is such that any individual could be targeted, and it's plausible that they could be found in violation of some statute given sufficient motivation on the part of investigators. This strikes me as intuitively true, and tracks with other signals such as the impact of "Broken Windows Policing"[1], the recent application of Justice Department investigations as political retribution, the ongoing phenomena of false confessions[2], the statistics involved with erroneous convictions[3], etc.. That's a charitable reading of the title and the author's intentions. I don't know that their underlying point is even possible to quantify, but in my opinion that doesn't detract from its basic assertion that no one should feel out-of-reach from the kind of motivated prosecution they describe in the one highlighted example. I also ran across another comment under one of the more critical reviews of the book, and I found it relevant (as did the author of the critical review, in their reply)[4]: > Also, I think the book also makes an important point implicitly on ‘rule of law’ arguments as they relate to public policy. It’s common for people to argue, for example, that regardless of the merits of illegal immigration or economic regulations, their violators deserve to be punished simply because, “it’s the law.” We can’t just let the law go unenforced. Except the law (often very trivial laws) goes selectively unenforced – and selectively enforced – all the time, as illustrated in Silverglate’s book. It’s already a foregone conclusion that we pick in choose how many resources (if any at all) to devote to enforcing a particular crime, usually depending on how severe it’s considered by most people. -- 1. https://www.simplypsychology.org/broken-windows-theory.html https://www.simplypsychology.org/broken-windows-theory.html 2. https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/false-confessions https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/fal... 3. https://innocenceproject.org/exonerations-data/ https://innocenceproject.org/exonerations-data/ 4. https://www.econlib.org/three-felonies-a-day/ https://www.econlib.org/three-felonies-a-day/ Edit: formatting