Comments on: Philip K. Howard, “Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law”

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

Philip Howard, “Life Without Lawyers”, cont’d — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:20:50 +0000

[…] his new book, which was also the subject of a nice piece in The Economist the other week (our earlier coverage). American Courthouse also comments, while Carter Wood at ShopFloor observes that George […]

By: Rufus

Rufus — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:10:43 +0000

One of the examples Will cites from Howard’s book is misleading. Will references the case where the driver voluntering for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee ran a red light and the Archdiocese was sued for $17m. That suit did not concern the Archdiocese’s liability for the driver, it concerned whether the driver was entitled to insurance coverage under the Archdiocese’s auto policy. A vastly different issue. Howard’s an extremist and taking a few outlier cases and then dishonestly distorting the facts of some of them to doesn’t due the legitimate cause of tort reform any good.

By: Max Kennerly

Max Kennerly — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:18:02 +0000

I’ll try to reserve judgment, but I remember The Death of Common Sense raising a multi-chapter stink about NYC not permitting Mother Teresa to open one of her “hospitals” merely because she refused to permit the installation of elevators in it.

Well, NYC was right. A hospital without elevators is useless. A hospice without elevators is useless. She was being unreasonable and NYC was correct to prevent her from establishing the same horrendous “care” facilities in America that she had set up throughout the world. See Christopher Hitchens’ book for more.

Since then I can’t take Howard seriously. His central example was not just wrong, but comically and dishonestly so.