ISPS SPECIAL EVENT: PRESENTATION AND PANEL DISCUSSION
Please join us at Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies for a round table discussion on Nicholas Bagley’s forthcoming book, “Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: How the Law is Holding America Back.”
The United States once successfully prosecuted two world wars, built the national highway system, created Social Security and Medicare, and diverted enough water to support huge cities in western deserts. Today, we struggle with the basics. The failure to construct enough housing in our most vibrant cities has led to exorbitant prices and surging homelessness. New renewable projects aren’t coming online fast enough, even as the risks of a warming climate demand an industrial-scale transition to renewable energy. Our public infrastructure is antiquated and crumbling because building costs are much higher here than in our peer countries.
Why can’t we have nice things?
This book tells the story of how the laws that are supposed to make government work better have stymied American progress. It is a story, first and foremost, about an overlooked but radical change in American law that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The abruptness and magnitude of the change is widely unrecognized, but it is at the root of much of what ails the United States in the 21st century. Today, our legal culture is in thrall to the belief that the only way to protect the things we care about is to force government to abide by strict procedural rules, backed up by intensive court review. The upshot is that our government institutions, caught in a web of laws, have stopped working effectively.
Nicholas Bagley is the Thomas G. Long Professor of Law at Michigan Law School. In 2020 and 2022, he served as special counsel and then chief legal counsel to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. His academic work has been published widely, including in the Harvard Law Review and the Columbia Law Review, and he contributes frequently to popular outlets, including The New York Times and The Atlantic.
The panel of discussants includes:
- Amy Kapczynski, Yale Law School
- Dave Schleicher, Yale Law School
- Stephen Skowronek, Political Science, Yale University
The event is being moderated by Alan Gerber, Director of ISPS and Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University.