Nobody would accept the rule of law if we didn't all know the alternative was the local bullies with the most friends and guns declaring themselves warlords and selling your family into slavery.

An open source project without a CoC on the other hand is quite normal and harmless. Maybe some people sometimes get their feelings hurt, but CoCs obviously don't prevent that anyway. The whole thing is dumb.

I would argue that laws are “bad” if there’s no way to get a proper hearing when you’re accused of violating them. Laws should constrain both sides of the law (the person subject to them and the person enforcing them) otherwise they’re just arbitrary rules by the person with more power. And while that’s a perfectly valid way to run something, it’s dishonest to dress “arbitrary personal decisions” up in the trappings of law. And realistically that applies to all the things you listed, COC, NDA, TOS etc.

But if someone can just drag out a law and vaguely accuse someone else of violating that law and then enforce a punishment with no way for the accused to get a hearing or present their case and have a real chance to prevail, then yes I would say the law is bad.