Why We Can't Have Nice Things

A provocative account of how our legal culture is holding us hostage—and what we need to do to change it.

American government is broken. The country that built the national highway system and created Social Security and Medicare can now barely manage the basics. What went wrong?

University of Michigan Law professor Nicholas Bagley argues that America’s obsessively legalistic approach to governance—our “procedure fetish”—has strangled progress. Beginning in the late 1960s, reformers concerned about reckless postwar development crafted rules and procedures to minimize social and environmental harm from government action. These reformers had the best of intentions. Their obsession, however, has now grown into a legal regime that prioritizes process over outcomes, stasis over progress, and lawsuits over results. It’s time to stop assuming that well-intentioned procedures are good because they’re well-intentioned, and instead think hard about how to make our institutions genuinely effective. With deep insider knowledge, incisive analysis, and fluid storytelling, Why We Can’t Have Nice Things identifies a fatal flaw in American governance—and our potential path forward.