Comments on: Philip Howard, “Life Without Lawyers”, cont’d

By: marv

marv — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 05:53:03 +0000

I think that we in the USA, have evolved to believe that individual rights supercede the common good. Consider the destruction after a hurricane. The obvious is that one should not build where storms are probable, should take responsibility for self protection of life and assets and should understand that a massive storm is a uncontrolled act of nature. Ok so one has insurance. Storn comes to town. Time for lawyers – what does insurance say, I thought I was fully protected from everything, the free trailers made us ill, the government departments did not give timely help, …on and on but little personal responsibility to move – “Its always been my home and I will stay till I die.” Someone owes me for what happened has become the new mantra for everything, everywhere and all the time. I was negatively impacted so I should get $$$.

By: February 3 roundup

February 3 roundup — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:11:28 +0000

[…] Maybe there’s hope for Dahlia Lithwick, she “shares concerns” about lame lawsuits and judgment-warping liability fears [Slate, on Philip Howard’s Life Without Lawyers] […]

By: Anonymous Attorney

Anonymous Attorney — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:00:54 +0000

I just finished reading this book. It’s got some nice ideas — a basic theme might be the need for “protection of discretion” in decisionmaking — but it’s short on concrete proposals for creating “life without lawyers.” I’m also sure that Howard, a Covington & Burling lawyer in New York, will get chiding from the plaintiff’s bar about how his clients must be thrilled with a book that uses highfalutin’ language to shame plaintiff’s lawyers into not suing. He really gets windbaggy at times, intoning like he’s a founding father or something. Still, nice effort, and his points need to get out there.

A point he overlooks is this: the more trusting society he envisions harkening back to existed at a time when there about 100 million (or fewer) people in the United States, about 90 percent of whom were white. Today, the United States is on track for a population of half a BILLION, with dozens of scrapping racial and ethnic groups and probably 100 different languages. To me, that’s the real underlying problem, and a major cause of “overlawyering” — the Tower of Babel that is American society is bound to become lawsuit-saturated. Howard quotes “Bowling Alone” academic Robert Putnam, but omits Putnam’s findings on the destruction of trust, cooperation and discretion that arises in a multiracial society.

I would be very surprised if any of Howard’s proposals go anywhere beyond the pages of his book . They essentially call for a Japanese level of societal cohesion and agreement, and we are far from that.