The Exaggeration of Rules and Laws essays

The Exaggeration of Rules and Laws essays In The Death of Common Sense, Philip K. Howard argues that the present day over-reliance on statutes and regulations in America as a means to create a just and fair society has, in fact, achieved just the opposite. In presenting his case, Howard is actually making a strong point in reminding the reader that the dispensation of justice requires the understanding and practice of the spirit of the law. Blind application and adherence to statutes of law will only lead to a system that may end up Howard traces the root of the system to the rationalist movement in the 1960s that favored statutory law, as it was believed to be more consistent and fair: "The credo of this rationalist order, like our law today, was that government should be self-executing and dispassionate. The idea spawned numerous reform movements, including socialism. It also led to the invention of modern bureaucracy." (Howard, 27-28) It is evident in the preceding statement that the spirit behind the formation of statutory law was unquestionably praiseworthy. Unfortunately, the solution devised led to a bureaucratic system that only succeeded in loosing sight of that very Bureaucracies, as is widely acknowledged, usually lead to the stifling of good ideas, innovation, initiative and most important a loss of perspective. Indeed, experience has shown again and again that bureaucracies usually miss the wood for the trees. And in doing so defeat the larger purpose for which they were set up in the first place. Howard ably demonstrates this very point when he cites the example of Mother Teresa's nuns of the Missionaries of Charity having to perforce abandon their plans to convert two abandoned buildings into homeless shelters in New York City on account of the bureaucratic insistence of the city's building code that the nuns would have to install a lift (Howard, 3-5). The ...