TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. My guest today, legal scholar Elie Mystal, says if it were up to him, every law passed before 1965 would be deemed unconstitutional. From his view, before the Voting Rights Act, the U.S. was basically an apartheid state. Mystal's new book, "Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America," mixes humor with deep analysis to argue that our laws on immigration, religious freedom, abortion and voting rights are actually making life worse than better. They've caused, he argues, massive social and political harm and don't reflect the will of most Americans.
Elie Mystal is a legal analyst and justice correspondent for The Nation and the legal editor of the "More Perfect" podcast on the Supreme Court for Radiolab. He's also an Alfred Knobler fellow at Type Media Center and the author of "Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy's Guide To The Constitution."
And Elie Mystal, as you always seem to do, you've made this subject both funny and informational. So we'll be laughing today to keep from crying. Thank you so much for this book, and welcome to FRESH AIR.
ELIE MYSTAL: Thank you so much for having me, Tonya.
MOSLEY: OK. So in each chapter of the book, you give an analysis of a law that you say is ruining America. There are 10 of them. How did you go about choosing which laws to focus on?
MYSTAL: That was the most difficult part of writing this book because, as you can imagine, there are a lot of laws.
MOSLEY: Yes.
MYSTAL: Many of them are stupid, and I did not read them all. So trying to scope how to pick just 10 was the initial challenge of the book. And where I landed on was trying to focus on laws that could be stricken today and have life be better tomorrow, right? There are many laws that we have that are dumb but inconsequential, right? And there are many laws that we have that are dumb but really complicated - right? - and require not repeal, but reform, require updates, require massaging, right? The laws that I focused on in my book are both consequential but don't need to be reformed, don't need to be massaged, don't need to be updated for the modern age. They're just stupid. And if we just got rid of them, things would be better the day after we got rid of those laws. So that was the kind of fundamental scoping of the book, and that's how I came up with the 10 that I chose to focus on.
MOSLEY: You are saying that these laws aren't basically imperfect, like the other types of laws that you mentioned. You're arguing that their very function is to harm.
MYSTAL: And what I try to do in the book is explain that the harm that these laws cause was what was intended by the people who passed them. You know, a lot of times in the book, I will go into the history of how these laws came about in the first place, and you will see people making terrible decisions, in real time, in support of these statutes and other kind of legal concepts and measures, right? The laws that I'm focusing on are functioning as intended, if you will. And their intention was poor. Their intention was bad. Their intention was antidemocratic or racist or, again - or monopolistic.
MOSLEY: I want to get to something I said when I introduced you, that you feel like before 1965 - really all laws before 1965 should be abolished, by and large. The United States' legal system relies so heavily, though, on judicial precedence. So almost everything goes back to what happened before it. So your feelings that everything before 1965 is kind of in direct opposition to what America is most proud of. Can you explain that argument a little bit more?
MYSTAL: Indeed, it is. It is an opposition to what America's most proud of, because I don't think America should be particularly proud of slavery and apartheid. And when you look at the laws that were passed before 1965, what we have is a situation where not everybody who was living here under the laws had a right to have a say in what those laws were. They didn't have a right to vote. They didn't have a right to participate in the government - not a full, fair and equal right to participate in the government. And so that is antithetical to the concept of democratic self-government.
Now, Tonya, you did slightly misstate my position in the open because I don't say that all of the laws passed before 1965 should be immediately and forever abolished tomorrow. That is actually a little bit too extreme, even for me. What I am saying is that any law passed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which I have always said is the most important single piece of legislation ever passed in American history 'cause it's the first piece of legislation ever passed in American history that made real the promise of democratic self-government, right? Before the 1965 Voting Rights Act, we are functionally an apartheid state. So what I'm saying is that any law passed before that - the Voting Rights Act - should be viewed with constitutional skepticism, right?
So put it like this - if all you got for why this should happen or that shouldn't happen is some law that was passed in 1921, I don't care. I just don't care. And I don't think the government should care. I don't think legislators and I don't think judges should care. If you've got an additional argument for why the law is good, well, now we can have a discussion, right? 'Cause I'm not saying that every single law passed before 1965 was facially bad.
MOSLEY: Right.
MYSTAL: The...
MOSLEY: I mean, there are some that were actually really good...
MYSTAL: Right.
MOSLEY: ...That moved forward progress in...
MYSTAL: The 1964...
MOSLEY: ...Good ways. Yeah.
MYSTAL: ...Civil Rights Act, I think, was pretty good. But I also think - and this is perhaps me being a little bit naive - I also think that the laws that were passed before the Voting Rights Act, the laws that were passed before we had full, fair and equal participation in government from all Americans, the laws that were passed before that, that we like, that we think are good, we could probably pass those again. At least we could try, right? So if you think that you have this law from 1921 that's still really good and really relevant and really important for the modern age, why don't you pass it again, this time asking everybody...
MOSLEY: OK. Let's get...
MYSTAL: ...Not just rich, white men? Let's ask everybody if we think that law is still good. And if so, and some of them will be, then let's go.
MOSLEY: Let's talk a little bit about some of the laws that you focus on in the book. We're not going to be able to get to all of them. But all of them, in some capacity, are part of the current news cycle. It's really interesting. And one big one...
MYSTAL: Thank you.
MOSLEY: ...Is our immigration laws. I want to talk about this in regards to a case that we are following right now. A Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil is an example of some of the problems you say are at the core of our immigration laws. To remind people, Khalil, who is a green card holder, was detained by ICE on March 8, accused of supporting Hamas and organizing protests on Columbia University's campus. The government has invoked elements of the 1921 Immigration and Nationality Act to justify his detention, and it's a law that you write about in your book. And we'll get deeper into your thesis about why you feel that this particular law should be abolished, but can you first explain the law as the government is interpreting it to detain Khalil?
MYSTAL: Yeah. So one provision of the INA of 1921 was that the secretary of state, on their sole discretion, can revoke the legal permanent status of immigrants - So green card holders and other - work visa holders, other legal permanent residents - that the secretary of state can revoke these legal documents on their say-so if they feel that that immigrant's activities contradict some fundamental foreign interest of the United States. There's no hearing. There's no jury. There's no trial. There's just the say-so of the secretary of state. That is dumb. That is antidemocratic. That should be unconstitutional. And the only reason why the government has any argument to hold - I believe, illegally hold - abduct and threaten to deport a legal green card holder like Khalil, who committed no crime - 'cause remember, Khalil has not been charged with any crime 'cause he didn't commit any crimes. He is being...
MOSLEY: Well, at the heart of the case is whether Khalil has First Amendment rights as a permanent resident.
MYSTAL: I would love to get to that heart of the case. But even before we get to that key First Amendment question, the fundamental hook that the government is using to hold Khalil is this determination by Rubio, by the secretary of state of the United States, who is currently Marco Rubio, that Khalil was engaged in anti-American activities, that the government even has a hook to revoke his green card. And that statute, that line, that hook comes from the 1921 Immigration and Nationality Act. To me, it is a perfect example of why these old, disgusting, racist laws should be repealed forthwith and on their face, because it is these kinds of metastasizations of the racism of the past that hound us and haunt us, even in our present and our future.
MOSLEY: You know, this administration has stoked this fear that more immigrants in this country means less resources. A higher chance they'll steal our jobs or commit crimes. And you're saying that characterization has no basis and is racist, and we know that because the people who made illegal reentry a felony actually said so.
MYSTAL: Yep. So the INA comes from a long congressional process. And one of the chief advocates for the INA and for the restrictions on immigration, specifically for immigrants from the Global South, was based on the science and testimony of a guy - Laughlin. Laughlin would later go on to receive a medal from the then-Nazi-controlled University of Heidelberg for his important scientific contributions to the theory of eugenics. When I say that America exported Nazi eugenics to the Nazis, I'm not being hyperbolic.
This guy, Laughlin - this is the guy that essentially told Hitler how to make eugenics work as a scientific proposition. And it's this guy and his science that the U.S. Congress relied upon while writing the initial INA. This guy was giving congressional testimony. In those congressional testimonies, congressmen - congressmen from both political parties, by the way - were saying how important the testimony is and how important it was to write an immigration law that would protect the white race in America from mongrelization by the weaker...
MOSLEY: Right. And, like...
MYSTAL: ...And inferior races. That's literally in the congressional record in support of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which is currently being used to hold Mahmoud Khalil illegally. It is one linear story, and that story is steeped in literal Nazi eugenics.
MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is legal scholar and author Elie Mystal. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR, and today I'm talking to legal analyst and justice correspondent Elie Mystal. He's written a new book called "Bad Law," and in it, Mystal critically examines 10 laws in the United States that he argues are causing significant harm to all of us. Mystal is a New York Times bestselling author of "Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy's Guide To The Constitution." He's also a legal analyst and justice correspondent for The Nation.
Elie, you actually start off the book asking the question, why isn't everyone registered to vote? Every single voter registration law, you argue, is antidemocratic, and I want you to explain what you mean.
MYSTAL: Every single one, right? So, look, voter eligibility requirements are one thing, right? Voter eligibility requirements are things like, you have to be 18, and you have to live in the state that you vote in and all these kinds of rules and regulations. And I can argue that some of the eligibility requirements are bad or wrong. But again, the scoping of the book, what can we repeal? I don't think that we can repeal voter eligibility requirements. We need to have some of them, even if some of them are ones that I wouldn't agree with or like.
Voter registration, on the other hand, is completely useless. Once we have established the rules for eligibility, everybody who is eligible should be automatically registered to vote. And that is not just me saying that. That is most of the democratic world saying that. America is unique in its double hurdles to voting, right? We call ourselves the greatest democracy on world - in the world. We are not. We are not in the top 10, because other countries have universal registration - have some...
MOSLEY: Right.
MYSTAL: Most other countries have some form of universal registration so that if you are eligible to vote, you are automatically then registered to vote. You don't have to go through a two-step process. Hey, I'm eligible, and now, also, I'm registered. That is insane. That is...
MOSLEY: OK, so..
MYSTAL: And that is straight-up antidemocratic.
MOSLEY: Let's go to the period after the Civil War, when registration laws actually took effect. Can - just remind us of that time period.
MYSTAL: Right. So first of all, registration was not endemic to the founding of this country, right? Whatever you think about James Madison and Thomas Jefferson and them, they weren't running around requiring preelection registration for eligible voters. Now, obviously, I disagree strongly with Thomas Jefferson's eligibility requirements. But for the 15 rich white men Thomas Jefferson thought should be eligible to vote, they didn't have to register to vote.
Voter registration really only became a thing in America after the Civil War. And it really only became a thing in America after the Civil War in the North because you had this exodus of newly freed Black people migrating to the North. You had this influx of immigrants from across the pond migrating to the North to places like New York, specifically to places like New York City.
So all of a sudden, New York state, fearing the Black and Irish swelling of New York City and how that would overwhelm and overrun upstate voters, that's when you get the first real voter registration requirements in the North, specifically in New York City - laws that are designed to make it harder for migrating Black folks and new immigrants into New York City, who are eligible to vote, to register to vote because that suppresses the vote of New York City and maintains the superiority of suburban - it wasn't suburban at that point - rural, upstate and Long Island voters to still keep control of New York state as a polity. That's where they come from.
MOSLEY: I thought it was so interesting in the book how you talk about, like, some states make the voting process more difficult than others. I didn't really realize that New York, of the 50 states, like, it has...
MYSTAL: We're easily one of the worst.
MOSLEY: Give us just, like, a few examples of why that is. It's really an interesting thing and actually in opposition to some others. Like, I think you mention North Dakota...
MYSTAL: North Dakota.
MOSLEY: ...Is the only state that does not have voter registration rules. But, yes, what makes New York so difficult?
MYSTAL: Well, first of all, we don't have same-day registration in New York, right? You have to register at least 10 days before the election to participate in an election in New York. And while 10 days might not seem like a lot of time if you are a politically active person who listens to things like FRESH AIR, but if you're a nonpolitical person who is right now listening to ESPN, being able to register to vote on the same day you actually go to vote for the election is kind of really convenient, right? But New York doesn't have same-day registration on Election Day. New York has nothing involving what's called portability, and that is critical for a market like New York. So portability means I'm registered in one county, and then I move - does my registration follow me, or do I have to reregister in the new county that I move to? And in New York...
MOSLEY: Right.
MYSTAL: There is no portability, so you constantly have to re-register every time you change counties. But think about how damning that is in a place like New York City, where if you move from Manhattan to Brooklyn, as many people do as they have children - if you move from Manhattan to Westchester as I did when I realized that my kid couldn't live in a shoebox - you have to re-register when you move to Brooklyn, or when you move to Westchester, or when you move to Long Island.
MOSLEY: One of the things your book does in talking about these bad laws is kind of give the reader - like, open up the reader's mind to a vision of what our society look like if these laws were no longer in existence or we had a chance to vote for them, for a new set of laws. How would overhauling voter registration, from your view, actually change society?
MYSTAL: Well, I like to think of it this way. The high watermark for voter participation in this country happened before we had voter registration, right? We had, you know, 80%, almost 90% turnout before voter registration laws attacked the country. Now, there are a couple of other stories about that. There are a couple of other reasons for that. We're a bigger country now than we were in the 1800s - yada, yada, yada. But I believe strongly that if we just had a voter eligibility requirement and everybody who was eligible to vote was automatically registered to vote, we would see participation shoot on up in this country, and voter participation not just for presidential elections but for all of the other elections all the way down the ballot - for the off year elections, for the congressional midterms, for state and local elections.
People think about re-registering around the four-year presidential election cycle. People often don't even know when their local elections are taking place. But if everybody was pre-registered, if everybody who was eligible was automatically registered, then you could literally say, hey, Jim, it's Tuesday. We got to go vote today. Really? What? I didn't know we had an election today. Yeah, we do, Jim. Let's go. And we could just go and vote and go home and go back to ESPN. You want to make voting as frictionless as possible if you want to increase participation.
MOSLEY: OK, let's take a break. Our guest today is legal scholar and author Elie Mystal. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley, and today, I'm talking to legal analyst and justice correspondent Elie Mystal. He's written a new book called "Bad Law," and in it, he critically examines 10 laws in the United States that he argues are causing significant harm to millions of Americans - to really all of us. Mystal is a New York Times bestselling-author of "Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy's Guide To The Constitution." He's also a legal analyst and justice correspondent for The Nation.
OK, I was really fascinated by your chapter on airline deregulation. I love the title, Who Gave Away The Skies To The Airlines? And this is an important chapter because you have this theory that Democrats embracing neoliberalism actually kick started with President Carter signing the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 into law. Explain and say more about that.
MYSTAL: Yeah, Tonya. So behind the curtain here, the inside baseball scoop is that this is the first chapter that I wrote for the book, right? And I know it sounds weird because airline deregulation, like, how is that nearly as important as immigration or voting rights, which we've just discussed. But I really hate flying and...
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MOSLEY: I think all of us do by now. I mean, very few people love it still...
MYSTAL: And I have such...
MOSLEY: ...In part, because of what has happened over the decades. Yes, continue.
MYSTAL: And because of law school, I had such a strong kind of understanding that the reasons why I hate flying are on purpose. The airlines are doing this on purpose. The laws have been constructed to allow the airlines to make me personally hate flying on purpose, right? But when I sat down to research it, I, like I usually do, kind of initially thought, all right, so where are the bad Republicans, right? Where are the Republicans? How did they do this? Let me explain it, right? And as I - you know, every kind of new book or new article, new case I would read, it was just like, oh, there are the Democrats again. Oh, there are some more Democrats. Oh. Oh, my goodness, there's all of the Democrats.
MOSLEY: (Laughter).
MYSTAL: And so it...
MOSLEY: Yes.
MYSTAL: ...Really kind of shaped a lot of the book to really, as I said in the beginning, the scoping of, let's think about the popular laws. Let's think about the laws that had broad bipartisan support, and airline deregulation had broad bipartisan support. So broad that its critical sponsor in the Senate was so-called well-known liberal lion, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. And so the entire chapter is kind of explaining how a fundamentally conservative Republican laissez-faire economic theory, deregulation, championed by one of the most racist lawyers and impactfully racist humans in American history - Robert Bork. The - for those playing along at home, Bork is the guy Nixon found to eventually fire everybody during the Saturday Night Massacre, right? That's Bork.
MOSLEY: Yeah, he was a Yale law professor, right?
MYSTAL: Right.
MOSLEY: Robert Bork, yes. And he invented this case for airline deregulation. Continue.
MYSTAL: How does Bork's ridiculous, untested, unproven conservative deregulation theory capture Ted Kennedy and become the standard operating procedure of the Democratic Party? And my chapter explores how exactly that happened. It was a heist.
MOSLEY: Right. So, OK, I think you're not alone in feeling, as I said, irrationally angry at the state of airline travel because of this. But to make this make sense for anyone under 40, can you first describe what airline travel looked like before deregulation?
MYSTAL: Well, you know, I only know about the glory days of airline travels from my father, and I kind of talk about that in the book. But basically, service was king. Service was king in the old days of airline travel, because the airlines couldn't change their prices very much. Prices were fixed by the federal government. There was a regulatory agency called the Civil Aeronautics Board, the CAB, which literally had price-fixing on airfares. So if you wanted to grow your business as an airline, you couldn't overcharge people. You couldn't under charge people. You couldn't compete on price. The only way you could compete was on service. And so that's why flying used to be awesome, because service was king. It was the only way to get people to fly, right? How do I fix...
MOSLEY: But that price-fixing - like, the fixing of the price, though, I mean, it was also very expensive to fly, right?
MYSTAL: Well, see, there's - the economists disagree. It was expensive to fly some places, but it was cheaper than it is now to fly some places, but it was cheaper to fly other places, right? And the difference between what was overly expensive and what was fairly priced depended on how popular the route was because of - because the point of the price-fixing was not just the big, bad government stamping down the businesses and innovation. It wasn't - that wasn't why they were price-fixing. They were price fixing to try to encourage airlines to fly to low populated routes.
MOSLEY: You know, today, I think one of many things with airline travel that people get upset about. Well, first off, it does seem like prices are all over the map. It just - you know, there seems to be - it's just - it's all based on the market, but what people really get upset about is how these incredibly profitable airlines continually get bailed out by taxpayers. What could travel actually look like if airlines were regulated today?
MYSTAL: Right, well, this is also the problem neoliberalism, right? It's ceding to the market what should be a government function, but then still having the government there to back up the market every time it fails. And that is a great business if you are one of the deregulated businesses, right, because that means you get to keep all of the profits when things are going well and get bailed out when things are going poorly. The airlines have had massive repeated shocks after 9/11, during COVID. That's just in the past 20 years, right? Twent-five years. Yet we bail them out. When the airlines are doing great, do they pay us back?
MOSLEY: No.
MYSTAL: Do they give the money back? No, no, no, son. No. That's not how it works. That's one of the fundamental flaws of neoliberalism. When you give the market what should be a government function, it's not just that the government then has to bail them out when they go poorly. It's that the government never gets the benefits when they do well. And that's the definition of the airline industry. They get all of the profits when things are fine, and we have to pay for them anyway, when things go wrong.
MOSLEY: OK, Elie, let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest today is legal scholar and author Elie Mystal. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
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MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And today, I am talking to legal analyst and justice correspondent Elie Mystal. He's written a new book called "Bad Law," and in it, he critically examines 10 laws in the United States that he argues are causing significant harm to all of us. Mystal is a New York Times bestselling author of "Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy's Guide To The Constitution." He is also a legal analyst and justice correspondent for The Nation.
We don't have time, Elie, to go through all of the laws that you've highlighted in your book, but I do want to quickly go through a few more of your arguments. We have, as you state, the least representative democracy among all wealthy nations in the world. But break this down because I think many people believe it's the exact opposite. We send representatives that, in theory, are supposed to represent us in Washington. Why is this system flawed?
MYSTAL: Our House of Representatives - right? - the House chamber of Congress - right? - which is our most basic federal representative - right? - your individual congressperson is the closest person to the actual people.
MOSLEY: Yeah.
MYSTAL: One congressman in America represents around 750,000 people. I don't remember the exact number. I wrote it down so I didn't have to remember the exact number. But it's somewhere in the order of 1 to 700-or-so thousand, right? That's the representative ratio of the country, 1 representative per 700-or-so thousand people, right? That ratio is the worst ratio of any country that calls itself a democracy in the world. And what that means is that in every other single country, one representative represents fewer people than one representative represents here. Our ratio is the worst of any country that calls itself a democracy. That's what I mean when I say that we have the least representative government amongst major democracies. I'm not - I don't mean that in terms of feeling. I mean that in terms of mathematical fact.
MOSLEY: You write that - I mean, it's really nearly impossible to overhaul the Senate, short of abolishing the Constitution, but overhauling the House is another matter. What is your idea?
MYSTAL: Well, it didn't always used to be this way, right? We are capped at 435 representatives, right? That's how many people are in the House. Why is that the cap? Is that cap required by the Constitution? No. Did we come up with 435 and we all - no. We used to - everybody knows after every census - every 10 years, we have a census. And we all go through the process of redistricting. And we find out that, like, some states gain representatives and some states lose representative, and we shuffle everybody around. That used to not happen.
For the first 150 years, whenever there was a new census, instead of moving congressmen around, they just added congressmen. So nobody lost representation. So the ratios remained relatively stable, right? So if you - if California ends up needing five more reps, instead of taking those five reps from New York, you just give California five more reps. Boom, problem solved. We did that until the 1920s.
MOSLEY: What happened in the 1920s that changed this?
MYSTAL: As with almost every story in this country, Black people happened, right? The 1920s saw a increasing relevance of people living in cities. Urban people happened, right? And so the 1920 census saw for the first time that real shift from an agricultural rural society to an urban city society, right? And so the redistricting that would have had to happen after the 1920 census would have given a lot more power to states that had large cities in it, as opposed to states that were mainly rural or agrarian.
And the people who controlled the government - at that point, it was Woodrow Wilson, who was one of the most racist presidents we've ever had - they didn't like it so much that they just ignored the 1920 census. We call - the scholars call the 1920 census the lost census because it's the only census where no redistricting happened whatsoever. They just - they were just like, oh, look at these numbers. Nah, we're not going to do it this time. And they just did not redistrict for an entire 10-year cycle.
Over those 10 years, they came up with their plan, and that plan was to cap the number of congressional representatives. So in 1920, we were at 435 congressmen. And as we get to 1930s - as we get the 1930 census, which shows the same things, because it's not like people were moving back to the farm. But by the 1930 census, we have now capped the number of congresspeople at 435. And so instead of adding representatives to states with large cities, we then just start moving them around between each other. And that is why we're here today, folks.
MOSLEY: OK. So this was done until the 1920s. Well, what you're talking about here would change the Electoral College, too.
MYSTAL: Right. So I'm saying that we should stop doing that. We should just add more congresspeople, right? And there are various different ways that we can think about adding more congresspeople, various different numbers that we could go for. I like what the scholars call the Wyoming rule, right? Every single state gets at least one representative, no matter unpopulated that state is. Currently, our smallest state by population is Wyoming. Wyoming has around 570,000 people, right? And they get one congressional representative. So let's just use what's called the Wyoming rule. Everybody, every 570,000 people, get one representative, right? That should be our ratio, not 1 to 750 or whatever, 1 to 570. That's what Wyoming gets. That's what everybody should get, right? If you did that, you'd have to add, oh, about 700 congresspeople. And that would be better. Having literally more congresspeople would be a more representative government. Now, Tonya, you mentioned the electoral college. You always hear - especially liberals - complain about the electoral college. Look, I don't like it neither, but you can't change the electoral college without a constitutional amendment. You can change the number of congresspeople just by a simple piece of legislation, which, again, we did for about 150 years. If you added 700 congresspeople, do you know what that does to the electoral college? It makes it way, way more representative of the larger states, right?
So imagine how many extra congresspeople would end up in California or New York if we went to the Wyoming Rule. And by the way, that's not necessarily partisan because the other states that would get a lot more congresspeople are Florida and Texas. So it doesn't fix all of the inherent unfairnesses of the electoral college, but it certainly makes the election for president far more indicative of the number of people who live in this country as opposed to the land that people happen to live on. I promise you, in a world with 700 extra congresspeople, Mike Johnson is not the speaker of the House. I promise you that right now.
MOSLEY: (Laughter). Elie, your father was, like, the first Black American elected to...
MYSTAL: The Suffolk County legislature.
MOSLEY: ...The Suffolk County - yes. You grew up. You were steeped in this. What books or writers were you reading when you were coming of age that is kind of like...
MYSTAL: Oh, back in the day?
MOSLEY: Yeah. Yeah, that, like, led you to your sensibility and understanding?
MYSTAL: Oh, man, nothing political. I mean, I'm reading Ralph Wiley on ESPN and in Sports Illustrated, man, when I'm 7 or 8, right? I'm a baseball kid when I'm 7 and 8. My first big political influence was John McLaughlin because we had one TV in our house. And so, you know, while other kids got to watch, like, Sunday morning cartoons and Saturday morning cartoons, we had to watch all the political shows. And so I would always watch McLaughlin because McLaughlin, when that was over, I got the TV. So I could play Atari after McLaughlin. So I spent a lot of time - there are - my mom still has tapes of me, like, arranging my, like, you know, action figures around and going, Issue No. 1, He-Man. Why is - like, I would literally record myself doing that. Like, that's how much of a nerd I was. So that was a huge political influence for me.
Obviously, my parents. And they were, you know, my parents, both my mom and my dad were on the activist side of this. And so that was a huge influence in terms of my, like, sensibility of how important these kinds of things are. But a lot of my style - when I was in college and law school, right, this is mainly during the Bush administration, right? And so the most prominent liberal talker in my orbit was Keith Olbermann. And for most of my kind of career, I've kind of thought, well, what if Keith Olbermann was Black and had a law degree? How would that turn out? That's kind of what I am.
MOSLEY: (Laughter) Elie Mystal, thank you so much.
MYSTAL: Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.
MOSLEY: Elie Mystal's new book is "Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America." Coming up, our TV critic reviews "Ludwig," a charming new mystery series from BritBox. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF DANIEL FREEDMAN'S "LOVE TAKES TIME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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