The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

by Philip K. Howard and Howard Philip

Book Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "We need a new idea of how to govern. The current system is broken. Law is supposed to be a framework for humans to make choices, not the replacement for free choice." So notes Philip K. Howard in the new Afterword to his explosive manifesto The Death of Common Sense . Here Howard offers nothing less than a fresh, lucid, practical operating system for modern democracy. America is drowning--in law, lawsuits, and nearly endless...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812982746
• ISBN13: 9780812982749
• Release Date: May 2011
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Quick read sure to anger and inform

If you're the sort who enjoys fuming at absurd lawsuits and incomprehensible government action, Howard's "The Death of Common Sense" may well be right up your alley. A brisk read, the 200 or so pages here are filled with examples of government gone awry, absurd legal maneuvers, and public policies that defy common sense.Silly lawsuits and wholly unnecessary laws are central to Howard's rants on over-aggressive government. The book is filled with specific examples, usually followed by pretty sound reasoning as to WHY we, too, should be irritated. All that is missing are solutions. The author offers some, but they are few and far between.One thing is certainly welcome: Politics rarely intrude here. Well-written and to the point, Howard doesn't appear to be walking far to the right or the left. The political neutrality is welcome. There is probably a libertarian bent present, but it's hardly intrusive; this is not a political book. And in these times of overly political books, that is a classic Good Thing.A quick read, paced well with plenty of examples, this is a good pick for those who enjoy peering at the foibles of misguided government.

Great from start to finish.

This is a quick, easy read and I can relate to this book. My parents run a small, family business and we waste so much time and money to try and sort our way through all of this nonsense when we should be coming up with ideas to be more productive. After you read this book, you realize how much of a strain this puts on everyone.

Finally, a book about this lingering thought

As someone who has struggled to comply with reams of intractable federal regulations, I've often paused at this thought: there's something massively wrong with laws in the US. Howard captures the essence of the problem admirably. It's reassuring to know you're not alone in being bewildered by a system that has gone so awry.

A TEXT BOOK ABOUT NORMATIVISM AGAINST NATURAL PRINCIPLES

This is food for thought, not only for law students, lawyers and practitioners but also for the common citizen. In particular, for all those that get lost in the ill conceived red tape of mother bureaucracy, get stuck in fragmentary and nonsensical regulations. Not only the author provides enough examples of organizational lunacy, due to excess of formalism or elaborate distorsions of clear legal texts and principles, but also gives some insights about possible solutions to the problem of the excessive weight of rules and procedures so precise that no one has the chance to think for himself or find a solution to a problem applying common principles.As Howard points out: "The sunlight of common sense shines high above us whenever principles control: What is right and reasonable, not the parsing of the legal language, dominates the discussion.With the goal shining always before us, the need for lawyers fades along with the receding legal shadows. People understand what is expected from them."This is a provocative book written by somebody that has been a practicing lawyer as well as a teacher. These two hats permit the author to better size up the frustrations and limitations that paperwork and stupid regulations inflict upon the citizens.It should be required reading for law students.

Law has replaced humanity and process supercedes reason.

Philip Howard's insights help us understand why government appears arbitrary, almost never able to deal with real-life problems in a way which reflects an understanding of the situation. Peppered with pointed anecdotes about absurd regulatory inflexibility and the lack of the use of judgement, Howard's book reveals that we have concocted a system of regulation that "goes too far while it does too little." In the decades since WWII, specific legal mandates designed to keep government in check have proliferated. The result is not better government, but more and poorer government. In a free society, we are supposed to be free to do what we want unless it is prohibited. But highly detailed regulations proscribing exactly what to do turn us toward centralized uniformity, Howard says, where law has replaced humanity. Detailed rules and uniform procedures have nonuniform effects when applied to specific situations. Our old system of common law recognized the particular situation and invited the application of common sense. Common law evolved with the changing times and its truth was relative, Howard tells us, not absolute. But in this century statutes have largely replaced common law, and in recent decades regulations have come to dominate the legal landscape. Howard observes that the Interstate Highway System (still the nation's largest public works program) was authorized in 1956 with a 28-page statute. Now, we attempt to cover every situation explicitly. He cites one contract lawyer who received a proposed definition of the words and/or that was over three hundred words in length. (Let alone the more recent and prominent lawyer who parsed carefully over the definition of what the word "is" is.) Howard traces the growth of this regulatory "rationalism" from Max Weber - the German sociologist at the turn of the century who said that "Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is `dehumanized'" - to Theodore Lowi - who in The End of Liberalism in 1979 saw greater regulatory specificity to be the antidote to special interest groups. But in truth, Howard shows us, the more precise we try to make the law, the more loopholes are created. Centralized rules have caused us to cast away our common sense. Furthermore, "Coercion by government, the main fear of our founding fathers, is now its common attribute. But it was not imposed to advance some group's selfish purpose; we just thought it would work better this way. The idea of a rule detailing everything has had the effect of reversing the rule of law. We now have a government of laws against men." The second section of Howard's book explains how the ritualization of bureaucratic process has brought us to the point where people argue, not about right and wrong, but about whether something was done the right way. He sees the agency as mainly a referee to the process, not a decision maker. He beautifully describes how the bureaucracy surges an