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The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

Book by Philip K. Howard · 3 quotes · Law, Absolute Power, Absolutes

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The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America Quotes

“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 fosters cooperation, not the opposite.”

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Book:The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
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“Rights are not the language of democracy. Compromise is what democracy is about. Rights are the language of freedom, and are absolute because their role is to protect our liberty. By using the absolute power of freedom to accomplish reforms of democracy, we have undermined democracy and diminished our freedom.”

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Book:The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
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“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 central planning was, because ti can't think. The comedy of law's sterile logic--large POISON signs warning against common sand, spending twenty-two years on pesticide review and deciding next to nothing, allowing fifty-year-old white men to sue for discrimination--is all too reminiscent of the old jokes we used to hear about life in the Eastern bloc. Judgement is to law as water is to crops. It should not be surprising that law has become brittle, and society along with it.”

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Book:The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America
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