We've been trained to squint into a legal microscope, hoping that we can judge any dispute against the standard of a perfect society where everyone will agree what's fair, and where accidents will be extinct, and risk will be no more.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the unrealistic expectation of achieving absolute fairness and a risk-free society through legal mechanisms.
Philip K. Howard's quote critiques the tendency of society to overly rely on legal systems to resolve disputes under a false assumption of a perfect world. He suggests that such a perspective is flawed because it ignores the inherent complexities of human nature and the inevitability of risk and accidents in life. Instead of striving for an unattainable ideal, we should recognize and manage the nuances of fairness and justice in our imperfect society.
In practice
This quote can be used in a law school discussion about the limitations of the legal system.
As I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything else matters but me.
With a small fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the Iraq war, the US and Australia could ensure every starving, sunken-eyed child on the planet could be well fed, have clean water and sanitation and a local school to go to.
I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me
Trees are massacred, houses go up — faces, faces everywhere. Man is spreading. Man is the cancer of the earth.
I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that's true to some degree.
There are powers that can counterfeit almost everything in the Christian life.
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