Publishers Weekly
10/11/2021
The Nation contributor Mystal debuts with a pugnacious and entertaining critique of conservative interpretations of the Constitution. Contending that the Constitution and its amendments “were designed to create a society of white male dominance,” and that conservatives “use the law to humiliate people, to torture people, and to murder people,” Mystal refutes the idea that the First Amendment protects people from being “canceled” for “spew racist, sexist, or homophobic slurs,” and notes the irony that Republicans who express outrage over “cancel culture” didn’t speak up when Peter Thiel financed a series of lawsuits against Gawker and Donald Trump’s Justice Department harassed a woman who laughed during Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s confirmation hearings. Elsewhere, Mystal points out that Republicans passed gun control legislation when they were concerned about the Back Panthers openly carrying loaded weapons, contends that the conservative justices on today’s Supreme Court are hypocritically using the same logic of “unenumerated” constitutional rights they’ve critiqued in liberal decisions “to gut labor laws and regulations on businesses,” and argues that laws restricting access to abortions don’t make sense “if you assume that women are people and thus deserving of equal protection.” Buttressed by Mystal’s caustic wit and accessible legal theories, this fiery takedown hits the mark. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
Praise for Allow Me to Retort:
“It is impossible to enjoy reading the Constitution more than through the searing perspective of the brilliant Twainesque humor of Elie Mystal in Allow Me to Retort.”
—New York Journal of Books
“This witty, profane, and well-argued book makes a strong case for recognizing the flaws in our founding document and doing what we can to fix it.”
—Washington Lawyer
“A pugnacious and entertaining critique of conservative interpretations of the Constitution. . . . Buttressed by Mystal’s caustic wit and accessible legal theories, this fiery takedown hits the mark.”
—Publishers Weekly
“There’s something to learn on every page. . . . A reading of the Constitution that all social justice advocates should study.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Fantastic . . . such a great combination of fury, righteous indignation, humor, and incredible erudition and brilliance.”
—Chris Hayes, host of “Why Is This Happening?” podcast, MSNBC
“I loved this book very much . . . chapter nine, ‘The Taking of Black Land’ was [a] favorite of mine and ‘Reverse Racism Is Not a Thing’ . . . is fantastic.”
—Sunny Hostin, co-host of The View and author of Summer on the Bluffs
"After reading Allow Me to Retort, I want Elie Mystal to explain everything I don’t understand—quantum astrophysics, the infield fly rule, why people think Bob Dylan is a good singer. . . ."
—Michael Harriot, The Root
“A tour de force from the Explainer-in-Chief of American law! Mystal’s sharp wit entertains and educates about some of the greatest misconceptions of Constitutional scholarship and travesties in American justice.”
—Malcolm Nance, bestselling author of The Plot to Hack America
“Essential reading for people who think that you need to go to law school to understand our founding documents, and the perfect guidebook for Americans who want to understand how our country is supposed to work.”
—Zerlina Maxwell, MSNBC analyst and author of The End of White Politics
“I loved Allow Me to Retort. It’s a powerful and important book of brightly alive ideas. Mystal deconstructs tired arguments and failed positions with his signature intelligence, humor, grace, and extraordinary wit. His big brain, bright ideas and fierce advocacy for what is right are an antidote to the poison of our current political system.”
—Don Winslow, bestselling author of The Border
“Elie Mystal is the funniest lawyer in America. Allow Me to Retort is brisk and brutal, sharply argued, full of both laugh-out-loud lines and righteous fury.”
—Matt Levine, “Money Stuff” columnist, Bloomberg Opinion
“In Elie Mystal, we, the people, have a smart and funny legal pugilist. Allow Me to Retort is the people’s guide to today’s battles over the use, misuse, and abuse of the Constitution, and how we can actually secure justice for all.”
—Dan Berger, professor of comparative ethnic studies, University of Washington, and author of Rethinking the American Prison Movement
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-10-16
An irreverent refutation of a document many profess to revere.
Mystal, an analyst at MSNBC and legal editor for the Nation, reads the Constitution from the point of view of a Black man keenly aware of the document’s origins in a slaveholding nation. “It is a document designed to create a society of enduring white male dominance,” he writes, “hastily edited in the margins to allow for what basic political rights white men could be convinced to share.” As the author abundantly demonstrates, people of color and women have always been afterthoughts, and recent conservative applications of constitutional doctrine have been meant to further suppress the rights of those groups. “The law is not science,” writes the author, “it’s jazz. It’s a series of iterations based off a few consistent beats.” Conservative originalists know this, but they hide their prejudices behind the notion that the text is immutable. Mystal shows how there’s plenty of room for change if one follows a rule hidden in plain sight: “There’s no objective reason that the Ninth Amendment should be applied to the states any less robustly than the Second Amendment. The only difference is that the rights and privileges that the Ninth Amendment protects weren’t on the original white supremacist, noninclusive list.” Article by article, amendment by amendment, Mystal takes down that original list and offers notes on how it might be improved as a set of laws that protect us all, largely by rejecting conservative interpretations of rights enumerated and otherwise. Although he writes offhandedly at times and certainly off-color at others—“Being an asshole is not a protected class, which is lucky because I discriminate against them all the time”; “ammosexualis the scientific categorization for a person who fetishizes firearms and can’t win at Scrabble”—it’s eminently clear that the author knows his constitutional law and history inside and out. There’s something to learn on every page.
A reading of the Constitution that all social justice advocates should study.
