Why We Can’t
Have Nice
Things

“Nick Bagley taught me everything I know about the lawyerly society. This book will reveal how our lives have been governed by aging hippies, entrenched interests, and their judicial handmaidens. And it will invigorate Americans to ask whether they must obsess over procedures and legalisms—or whether they can still get things done.”

“Terrific, beautifully written, and extremely important. Nicholas Bagley has authored an unsettling book about a legal culture so devoted to process that it can leave democratic government unable to build or to act. He demonstrates how we have asked judges to do a job for which they are not equipped. One need not accept Bagley’s every answer to feel the force of his central challenge: whether a legal system built to restrain government can still allow it to govern.”

“We’re used to thinking about the law and lawyers as mechanisms for government. Nick Bagley shows how, in the real world, they can do the opposite. Whereas Taylor Swift said we can’t have nice things where “there are no rules,” Bagley demonstrates that we haven’t been getting nice things because there are too many rules. Law and lawyers have been weaponized to subvert good government and to keep government from delivering the public goods. At a time when government is in need of serious reforms so that it can meet people’s needs, Bagley provides some reason for optimism—that maybe, just maybe, we can have nice things after all.”

“This book is so good and important. Nicholas Bagley has long been one of the essential voices on why America can’t build, and his new book is an exceptional work. For decades, many liberals assumed that more procedure, more lawsuits, and more rights to object were inherently democratic. But Bagley correctly argues that democracy is about outcomes. If elected governments cannot build housing, clean energy, public transit, schools, and infrastructure because every decision is turned into a litigation Christmas tree, then procedural democracy becomes anti-democratic in practice. This is a good lawyer’s case against a bad lawyerly society.”

“Bagley makes sense of the senseless. Anyone trying to understand how American government broke, and how to fix it, should read this book. And the great surprise is how much you’ll enjoy it. Bagley makes a maddening topic a delight to explore!”

“A vivid, powerful, and passionate attack on processes and barriers that slow everything down—and that end up burdening government and the private sector alike. Important reading for all those who want a better future.”