The late James Q. Wilson once observed of a domestic reform proposal that, like Middle East peace, it had everything in its favor except feasibility. It’s hard to avoid this conclusion about the reforms proposed by Philip K. Howard.

Howard sees an America mired in frustration and dysfunction. As he says at the outset of his new book, Everyday Freedom:

Nothing much works as it should. Simple daily choices seem fraught with peril. In the workplace, we walk on eggshells. Big projects—say, modernizing infrastructure—get stalled in years of review. Endemic social problems such as homelessness become, well, more endemic.

As a lawyer, Howard focuses his diagnosis on the legal system. Everything seems to risk lawsuits, which in turn generate demand for detailed rules and regulations from bureaucrats, which smother initiative and undermine trust. “The cure,” he maintains, “is not mainly new policies, but new legal operating structures that re-empower Americans in their everyday choices.” Howard would like to discard legalism in favor of confident reliance on sound judgment: “Liberty in the broad sense requires judges and officials, when applying legal principles, to assert norms of reasonableness. Otherwise, self-interested people will use law to claim almost anything.”

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