RNS Quote of the Day: 10/18/06

Much of the growth in law, however, was due not to government’s expanded role but to it’s techniques. We changed our attitude toward legal detail: The words of law expanded far faster than the new areas of law. The Federal Register, a daily report of new and proposed regulations, increased from 15000 pages in the final year of John F. Kennedy’s Presidency to over 70000 pages in the final year of George H.W. Bush’s. The Interstate Highway System, still the country’s largest postwar public works program, was authorized by a 1956 statute that ran 28 pages. A transportation act passed by Congress in 1991, which almost none of you probably noticed, was ten times longer.

The Death of Common Sense – Philip K. Howard