Harvey Silverglate is a Boston criminal and civil rights lawyer of great renown, Not necessarily a household name, as with the show ponies who run when a TV station calls to pontificate for 30 seconds on cases they know nothing about, but the type of lawyer whose fame was amongst lawyers and earned in the courtroom.  And he’s now joined the Volokh Conspiracy as a guest blogger.

Harvey wrote a book entitled Three Felonies a Day, How the Feds Target the Innocent.  While I love the title and concept, I wasn’t as thrilled about the book itself.  From what I can see of Harvey’s first post, however, his plan is to address the underlying concept of the book that was somehow lost in the war stories of peculiar instances of overcriminalization and prosecution.  In other words, he’s now going to do what I wished he had done in his book.

The point is that ordinary people doing the ordinary things that ordinary people do will, based upon a structure of vague and shockingly comprehensive federal criminal laws, commit federal felonies on such a regular basis that we are all criminals, and that we are sitting ducks should the feds choose to come after us. It’s not that we’re evil, or the conduct we commit is deemed reprehensible by society and worthy of punishment.  It’s that there are so many laws, and that the laws are so vague, that with minimal effort, the feds can indict and prosecute pretty much anyone they want.

I look forward to Harvey’s blawging about the idea.  This is a subject that should both shock and appall every right-thinking person, coming on a generation of get-tough and get-tougher on crime politics that compelled legislators to quickly and roughly craft laws that will cover every situation that might conceivably arise.  In the process, they’ve criminalize mere normal living.  Yet most people haven’t got the slightest clue that it’s happened, or how pervasive the problem is.  Indeed, few are concerned until it’s their turn in the dock, when it suddenly appears as if the whole world’s gone nuts.

Welcome to the blawgosphere, Harvey.