A partisan rush to prosecute Trump. By Alan M. Dershowitz.

It is so easy to comb the statute books in an effort to identify every conceivable crime that might be applicable to any given situation.

As Harvey Silverglate wrote in his superb book, “Three Felonies a Day,” prosecutors play the following game: One names a well-known and controversial person, and the others search through the statute books to figure out which three felonies they committed on a given day. That is what prosecutors do when they are playing games. It’s not supposed to be what they do when they destroy a person’s life by indicting them.

A proliferation of laws, mainly unenforced, leads to corruption and political games. For instance in China it is pretty much impossible to avoid breaking a few laws each day, so if you fall into disfavor with Party Officials then they just ask the local prosecutor to do their thing.

Selective enforcement is a powerful tool for bureaucratic rule, giving bureaucrats way too much power over citizens. Unfortunately it is becoming more common in the West.