Method

What earns a place on the ledger

An entry is not a charge. It is a description of a rule, and of the moral objection to using it.

The test

A practice is listed only if both of these are true.

First, a statute, regulation, or controlling judicial opinion allows it in at least one American jurisdiction. “People get away with it” is not enough.

Second, a ordinary person, told the facts without the legal label, would call it theft, cheating, bullying, or abuse. The gap between those two sentences is the subject of the site.

What is excluded

Anything that is simply a crime with weak enforcement. Tax evasion, wage theft, bribery, and fraud are illegal. They are not “technically legal.” Gray markets that depend on lying to a regulator are out.

Also excluded: instructions. Each note says when the same conduct crosses into illegality, so a reader can see the edge. It does not say how to stand on the edge.

Two tellings

Every case has a street telling and a brief telling. The street telling uses the words a neighbor would use. The brief telling names the statute or the case, and the limit. If those two accounts disagree, the disagreement is the point.

Jurisdiction

The United States is fifty codes wearing one flag. A payday loan, a secret recording, or a partisan map can be lawful in one state and banned next door. Entries say so. They are not a national rulebook.

Sources

Notes cite public statutes and reported opinions: the U.S. Code, the Internal Revenue Code, and Supreme Court decisions including Kelo, Citizens United, Rucho, Bordenkircher, Concepcion, and Timbs. They are starting points for a reader, not a memo to a client.