Philip K. Howard Quotes

Uniformity in the common law, consisting of broad principles like the reasonable person standard, generally permits adjustment for the circumstances. This type of uniform principle is almost synonymou...

Plato argued that good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will always find a way around law. By pretending that procedure will get rid of corruption, we have suc...

About Author

Philip King Howard (born October 24, 1948) is an American lawyer and writer. He has written on the effects of modern law and bureaucracy on human behavior and the workings of society. He started Common Good, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which advocates simplifying government.

By exiling human judgment in the last few decades, modern law changed role from useful tool to brainless tyrant. This legal regime will never be up to the job, any more than the Soviet system of centr...

Automatic law corrodes our freedom

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, John Maynard Keynes famously observed, but in escaping from the old ones.

Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally...

In 2010, 70 percent of federal tax revenue was consumed by three entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security)

America has succumbed to its own intermediate goal. Purging official discretion, not advancing the public good, has become the goal of the Rule of Law. Better to prevent a bad choice, even at the cost...

Mindless rules, not accountable officials, are the enemy of freedom.

Overthrow the bureaucracy, and return to a system based on human responsibility.

We must abandon our belief that human choice denigrates the Rule of Law.