Elie Mystal

Last updated

Elie Mystal
Elie Mystal 01.jpg
Mystal in 2023
Born
Elie Ying Mystal

(1978-05-10) May 10, 1978 (age 47)
Education Harvard University (BA, JD)
Occupations
  • Writer
  • political commentator
Employer The Nation
Known forCommentary and criticism about the U.S. Constitution
SpouseChristine Nyereyegona
Children2

Elie Ying Mystal (born May 10, 1978) is an American political commentator, writer and former litigator. He is the justice correspondent at The Nation , where he writes about the courts and the criminal justice system. [1] [2] Mystal has described himself as a liberal. [3]

Contents

Early life and education

His father, also named Elie Mystal, was Haitian-American, the first black person elected to the Suffolk County Legislature, and an influential political operative whose career ended with a fine for violating election district residency laws. [4] His mother was of mixed African-American and Chinese descent; Mystal's middle name Ying comes from the surname of his maternal grandfather, a Chinese immigrant. [5] [6]

Mystal received a Bachelor of Arts degree in government at Harvard College and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. [7]

Career

Mystal is a former litigator at the Debevoise & Plimpton law firm who elected to "quit the legal profession to pursue a career as an online provocateur", according to the NYU Review of Law & Social Change website. [8] He is a former executive editor of the Above the Law legal news website. [1] He has made guest appearances on MSNBC and Sirius XM. [1]

Mystal is the author of Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution, which is intended to be an "easily digestible argument about what rights we have, what rights Republicans are trying to take away, and how to stop them." [9] Mystal's book, which was published by The New Press in March 2022, made The New York Times Best Seller list that same month. [10]

As of 2022, Mystal was a board member of Demand Justice, a liberal judicial advocacy group. [11]

Views

Mystal has described himself as a liberal. [3] He has been a supporter of civil rights and abortion rights. [12] [13]

In March 2022, he said the United States Constitution is "actually trash", pointing to the Fugitive Slave Clause and the Three-fifths Compromise. [3] In that interview, he said about the Constitutional Convention, "We act like this thing was kind of etched in stone by the finger of God, when actually it was hotly contested and debated, scrawled out over a couple of weeks in the summer in Philadelphia in 1787, with a bunch of rich, white politicians making deals with each other." [3]

Publications

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Elie Mystal: Justice Correspondent". The Nation . December 10, 2018.
  2. ↑ Markay, Lachlan (March 6, 2022). "Progressives prep big spending for Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation". Axios . Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Obeidallah, Dean (March 23, 2022). "Elie Mystal: Our Constitution is "actually trash" — but the Supreme Court can be fixed". Salon . Retrieved March 25, 2022. Elie Mystal, attorney
  4. ↑ Brand, Rick (November 29, 2017). "Elie Mystal dead at 71; Suffolk legislator brought down by residency law". Newsday .
  5. ↑ Mystal, Elie [@ElieNYC] (February 13, 2022). "My grandfather was Chinese. Literally from China. He married a black schoolteacher in Mississippi. My full legal name is 'Elie Ying Mystal'[.] And yet, if Joe Biden nominated me for the Supreme Court as its first Asian-American, people would call him, not me, fraudulent" (Tweet). Archived from the original on February 13, 2022. Retrieved April 1, 2025– via Twitter.
  6. ↑ Mystal, Elie [@ElieNYC] (July 31, 2024). "Do you notice how @KatiePhang calls me Elie "Ying" Mystal? That's because my grandfather on my mother's side is Chinese. Ying, my middle name, was his surname. My grandmother, however, can trace her Black linage to a plantation in Mississippi. And my father is Haitian" (Tweet). Retrieved April 1, 2025– via Twitter.
  7. ↑ "Elie Mystal, Author at Above the Law". Above the Law . Retrieved June 19, 2022. He was formerly a litigator at Debevoise & Plimpton
  8. ↑ "Elie Mystal". N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change. April 14, 2020. Retrieved March 15, 2025.
  9. ↑ "Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution". The New Press .
  10. ↑ "Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers, March 27, 2022". The New York Times .
  11. ↑ Oprysko, Caitlin (December 9, 2022). "A peek under the hood at Demand Justice". Politico . Retrieved December 30, 2022.
  12. ↑ Mystal, Elie (July 13, 2021). "My Black Generation is Fighting Like Hell to Stop the Whitelash". The Nation .
  13. ↑ Pengelly, Martin (June 30, 2022). "Biden backs exception to Senate filibuster to protect abortion access". The Guardian. Retrieved July 7, 2022.
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