Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law »

How to restore the can-do spirit that made America great, from the author of the best-selling The Death of Common Sense.

Publishers Weekly

In his latest prescriptive survey of American law abuse and its consequences, Howard (The Death of Common Sense, The Collapse of the Common Good) sticks to the formula: one ghastly anecdote after another demonstrating how the justice system hinders freedom and confounds Americans who simply want to do the right thing. Either through litigation or the fear of it, Howard argues, we've ceded our everyday decision-making to the lawyers (we "might as well give a legal club to the most unreasonable and selfish person in the enterprise") resulting in everything from "no running on the playground" signs to a 5-year-old handcuffed at school by police; from diminishing health care quality and spiraling costs to doctors afraid of discussing treatments among themselves over email. Chair of nonpartisan advocacy organization Common Good, Howard has a great deal of knowledge and a catalog of abuses that will elicit fury and despair. For the third time in some 15 years, Howard agitates for change by asking "How did the land of freedom become a legal minefield?"; in this time of financial depression and political hope, Howard may have found the perfect moment to sound his alarm.
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Introduction 11

Ch. 1 The Boundaries of Law 15

Ch. 2 The Freedom to Take Risks 34

Ch. 3 The Authority to Be Fair 49

Ch. 4 The Boundaries of Lawsuits 68

Ch. 5 Bureaucracy Can't Teach 93

Ch. 6 The Freedom to Judge Others 122

Ch. 7 Responsibility in Washington 150

Ch. 8 The Freedom to Make a Difference 178

Agenda for Change 203

References 207

Acknowledgments 219