Philip K Howard's Blog

Jon Stewart Interviews Philip K. Howard on The Daily Show

May 02, 2011

Appearing on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Monday, May 2, Philip. K. Howard argued that the law has shackled government and often stands in the way of common sense. Officials are no longer free to make the sensible everyday choices that are needed to make government efficient and reliable. Watch the video, and visit CommonGood.org to support the reforms our country needs.

Philip K. Howard Urges Common Sense Reforms

April 11, 2011

An essay by Philip K. Howard introduces this Newsweek feature, which includes reform proposals from 20 leading citizens. Howard writes that, “Decades of accumulated laws, often obsolete, have created a government paralysis of its own making.” These laws stand in the way of action both for government and for private citizens, like entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who notes, “Today, it’s impossible to start a business without professional help.” One solution would be to implement sunset laws that require reevaluation of old policies that may do more harm than good. As Howard puts it, we need to “scrap the byzantine legal framework” and use common sense reforms that every American can support. The citizens in the Newsweek feature—ranging from Eric Shmidt to Michael Bloomberg—recognize that need and offer simple but powerful approaches to fixing a broken system.

Philip K. Howard Calls for Legal Overhaul in the Washington Post

December 13, 2010

Writing the lead op-ed in December 12’s The Washington Post Outlook section, Philip K. Howard proposes that every law Congress enacts should expire after ten or 15 years. “A healthy democracy must make fresh choices,” he writes. “Such a universal sunset provision would force Congress and the president to justify the status quo and give political reformers an opening to reexamine trade-offs and public priorities.” Howard also calls for the radical simplification of law, writing: “The current convention of law-as-instruction-manual suffers the idiocies of central planning, forcing everyone to go through the day with their noses in rule books instead of using their common sense.” Howard concludes his piece by quoting Thomas Jefferson, who famously argued that small revolutions from time to time were “a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” A movement for legal overhaul, Howard writes, “is the medicine that America very much needs today.” You can read the full op-ed here.

Philip K. Howard on Freeing Teachers To Inspire

November 30, 2010

Philip K. Howard writes in the October 28 New York Daily News that the common denominator among schools with good teachers is that those teachers “feel[ ] free to teach in [their] own way.” “Inspiration requires spontaneity and originality,” he continues. “Teachers must own their classrooms. This is the secret of every successful school.” Teachers’ freedom, however, is under attack. “Instead of letting teachers inspire students with their passion and spontaneity,” Howard explains, “America has organized public schools as bureaucratic assembly lines. There is a rule for everything—so many rules that no one can know them all.” “We must abandon the bureaucracy so humans can take back control, school by school, classroom by classroom,” Howard concludes. “Not everyone will succeed. But many will, and probably much quicker than imagined. There’s nothing so contagious, the saying goes, as enthusiasm.” You can read the full op-ed here.

Philip K. Howard Appears on The Daily Show on Thursday, November 18

November 18, 2010

On Thursday, November 18, Philip K. Howard appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where he and Jon Stewart discussed how the accretion of law prevents individuals at every level of society from making needed choices, as well as the need for a movement to fix broken government:

Philip K. Howard Offers “Manifesto for a New Politics”

October 01, 2010

Writing in The Daily Beast, Philip K. Howard outlines five changes needed “to create a responsive government and to revive America’s can-do spirit.” Prescriptions include: radically simplifying law, restoring boundaries to lawsuits, and reviving accountability for public employees. You can read the piece here.

New York Times’ David Brooks Echoes Philip K. Howard’s Call to Restore Responsibility

September 24, 2010

In his column in The New York Times, David Brooks draws on Philip K. Howard’s work to argue that Americans are looking for “a restoration of responsibility” to rescue the country from its worsening paralysis. “[Howard] has seized the crucial theme of the moment,” Brooks states. “If bad government undermines responsibility then it should be restructured. And he’s offering one tool a creative politician could use to break through the logjam and help us avoid a truly awful few years.” You can read Brooks entire column here.

9-22-2010 aspen institute

September 08, 2010

On Wednesday, September 22nd, the Aspen Institute in Washington, DC held a roundtable discussion with Philip K. Howard in which he addressed how America is drowning in law and what the role of modern law should be. You can watch a video recording of the event, which was moderated by Newsweek’s and the National Journal’s Stuart Taylor, here.

Howard to lead forum discussion on lawyers

August 23, 2010

On Saturday, August 21st, Philip K. Howard discussed themes from Life Without Lawyers at the Chautauqua Women’s Club Contemporary Issues Forum. In his talk, Howard planned to address the need for a legislative “spring cleaning” and for “laws that are more purposeful and set boundaries that allow for people’s freedom to act and solve problems.” Click here to read Lori Humphreys’ profile of Howard in the Chautauquan Daily.

Philip K. Howard on the Need for a Popular Movement to Revive Individual Responsibility

July 21, 2010

Recounting a recent conversation, Philip K. Howard writes on his blog on TheAtlantic.com that “America has lost sight of the core principle of freedom—the power of each individual, at every level of responsibility, to make choices that adapt to current goals and circumstances.” He continues that our blindness to this principle—caused by the growth of law—has resulted in doctors practicing defensively, teachers losing control of their classrooms, and government officials being unable to balance budgets. Howard calls for a popular movement to revive individual responsibility, writing that “it’s hard to see any way forward except a new approach to law and government that re-empowers people to grab hold of problems and put their hands to work to solve the challenges of our time.”

Dennis McCuistion Interviews Philip K. Howard

April 26, 2010

Over the weekend, McCuistion TV host Dennis McCuistion interviewed Philip K. Howard about the problematic role of litigation in American culture. Video of the segment, which was originally broadcast on KERA Channel 13 in Austin, TX, is now available online:

[McCuistionTV]

President Obama Endorses Health Courts

March 04, 2010

On Tuesday, President Obama issued a letter to congressional leaders in which he proposed appropriating $50 million to states to pilot medical liability alternatives, including special health courts. Developed by Philip K. Howard’s nonprofit legal reform coalition Common Good and the Harvard School of Public Health, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the health court proposal has been long championed by Howard and Common Good as the best way to bring reliability, efficiency, and fairness to medical justice. Health courts would also reduce the practice of defensive medicine – which adds billions of dollars of waste to the cost of health care – and would provide for the openness needed to improve patient safety.

In a Common Good press release, Howard states: “This is a huge breakthrough. … Special health courts should provide quicker justice to patients injured by mistakes and give physicians confidence that they will not be dragged through years of litigation when they did nothing wrong.”

Howard was also featured in HealthLeaders Media. “I think it’s very important as we build American healthcare,” Howard said an the interview, “to create a reliable system of justice that all parties can trust.”

[Yahoo! News]
[Common Good]
[HealthLeaders Media]

Four ways to fix a broken legal system (TED)

February 22, 2010

The video of Philip K. Howard’s TED Talk, Four Ways to Fix a Broken Legal System, is now up:

TED Curator Chris Anderson has the following to say about Howard’s talk (via Twitter):

We’re about to release a talk from TED2010 that I wish every member of Congress, every Supreme Court justice would see…. about 8 hours ago
Philip Howard on how to ease the suffocating stranglehold of law in US http://on.ted.com/89lO Please RT. Stunning talk. #TED about 8 hours ago

[TED]
[Twitter]
[Huffington Post]

Philip K. Howard One of the “Fascinating People You’ve Never Heard Of”

February 16, 2010

CNN correspondents John D. Sutter and Richard Galant include Philip K. Howard among the “ten fascinating people you’ve never heard of” from this year’s TED Conference. Dubbing Howard “the anti-lawyer lawyer,” Sutter and Galant report:

A partner in the New York-based law firm Covington & Burling, Philip Howard is a crusader against the excesses of his own profession. Howard, author of “Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law,” gave a blistering talk at TED about how “the land of the free has become a legal minefield.”

He cited the Florida school district that banned running at recess as an example of how “people no longer feel free to act on their best judgment” for fear of getting sued. “People are acting like idiots,” he said. “For law to be a platform for freedom, people have to trust it.”

Howard pushes for policy changes in health care, education and other fields through an organization he founded, Common Good, which describes itself as “a non-profit, non-partisan legal reform coalition dedicated to restoring common sense to America.”

[CNN]
[TED2010]

Arianna Huffington’s Notes From TED

February 11, 2010

In her notes on the 2010 TED series, Arianna Huffington gives a rundown of TED curator Chris Anderson’s opening remarks. Huffington states that Anderson “met the zeitgeist head on, talking about his rage at the fact that every idea about how to deal with our big problems is crushed on a wall of cynicism and complexity.” She goes on to quote Anderson’s remarks on Session 11, titled “Simplicity,” for which Philip K. Howard will one of the speakers, this Saturday, February 13. “We are choking ourselves in a web of complexity,” States Anderson in the quote. “Our financial system is so complex it can’t be regulated. The health care plan is so complex no one understands it. Our politics is so complex it’s become a complete mess.” Anderson then gave brief statements about the presenters, including the following about Howard: “‘Philip Howard,’ he said. ‘His talk is an important call to rethink the role of law. The application of our laws has become so perverse, it chokes off innovation.’”

[Huffington Post]
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