Every Law Has Unintended Consequences

In books and articles I have written about law, I have emphasized that a law unfolds to the limit of its extent (and so do rules and regulations). For example RICO and asset forfeiture laws intended to make it easier to convict the Mafia by denying them access to their money, leaving them unable to hire lawyers, unfolded to the extent that police would stop cars and, if drivers had more than $100 in cash, confiscate the cash on the grounds that the amount indicted intention to buy or sell drugs. Perhaps the ultimate example was the police use of a motel room in a drug or prostitution sting.  The police then confiscated the motel on the grounds that the motel had facilitated a drug or prostitution crime. RICO laws have even found their way into marriage divorce cases.

As a few Americans might be aware, the liberal-left and Israel, for different reasons, have been working hard to establish a regime of hate speech and to criminalize it.  This has already occurred in Britain.  There are 13,000 British citizens in prison because their social media tweets were interpreted by authorities as hate crimes.