By Jeffrey T. Donner, Esq.

June 3, 2026

I. Introduction: The Question We Are Not Supposed to Ask

Are modern Americans actually free?

That sounds like a ridiculous question. In many obvious ways, the answer is yes. Americans can vote. They can travel. They can own property. They can start businesses. They can sue. They can criticize the government. They can choose their religion or reject religion entirely. They can marry by consent. They can move from Florida to Texas, from Ohio to Arizona, from a farm town to a city, or from a city back to the country.

A medieval serf could not do those things in any modern sense.

A serf was not a slave in the chattel sense, but he was not free. He was bound to land. He owed labor, rents, payments, or services. His mobility was restricted. His legal rights were limited. He lived under a hierarchy in which land, status, obligation, and personal dependency structured daily life.

So if the question is whether a modern American has more formal legal rights than a medieval serf, the answer is obvious.

Yes.

But that answer is too easy.

The harder question is whether modern freedom still operates in a meaningful, practical, day-to-day way — or whether modern Americans have become formally free citizens living inside an enormous machinery of taxation, licensing, regulation, surveillance, debt, insurance control, litigation risk, court costs, presuit barriers, procedural traps, administrative discretion, and government-by-lawsuit.

The medieval serf’s lack of freedom was visible. He knew the lord. He knew the land. He knew the manor. He knew the obligation. He knew who could command him.

The modern citizen’s restraints are more sophisticated. They appear as forms, portals, licenses, certifications, administrative rules, professional regulations, insurance requirements, zoning codes, e-filing systems, tax classifications, agency guidance, court procedures, local ordinances, school-board policies, HOA rules, and compliance departments.

The medieval serf had a lord.

The modern citizen has a file.

That does not make the modern American a serf. But it should make us more careful with the word “free.”

II. Medieval Unfreedom Was Personal. Modern Unfreedom Is Administrative.

The medieval world was not a simple cartoon of “lords and serfs.” There were kings, nobles, knights, clergy, lairds, burgesses, merchants, free tenants, unfree tenants, smallholders, cottars, laborers, craftsmen, and townsmen. Some rural people were unfree. Some were tenants with obligations. Some held land. Some had customary rights. Some lived in burghs with trading privileges and local governance. Medieval society was hierarchical, but it was not one undifferentiated mass of peasants chained to the soil.

That historical nuance matters.

If the comparison is made carelessly, it becomes unserious. Modern Americans are not literally medieval serfs. They are not legally tied to one lord’s estate. They are not hereditary peasants. They are not required to obtain a local baron’s permission to leave the village.

But the comparison remains useful because it exposes a deeper point.

Medieval domination was personal, visible, and hierarchical.

Modern domination is administrative, dispersed, and procedural.

A medieval tenant might owe labor to a lord. A modern citizen owes income taxes, payroll taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, impact fees, licensing fees, tolls, insurance premiums, filing fees, recording fees, code-compliance costs, professional fees, regulatory costs, interest, penalties, and hidden costs embedded in nearly every product and service he buys.

A medieval tenant might need permission from a superior to leave land or change obligations. A modern citizen may need permission to build, renovate, operate a business, hire workers, discharge workers, use land, open a professional office, rent property, repair property, host short-term tenants, homeschool children, obtain medical treatment, carry insurance, file suit, serve process, conduct discovery, or even file documents through a court portal without administrative rejection.

A medieval tenant might be subject to the lord’s local court. A modern citizen may be subject to federal agencies, state agencies, county commissions, city councils, school boards, licensing boards, professional regulators, judicial administrative committees, clerks of court, HOAs, condominium associations, hospital billing systems, insurance adjusters, banks, credit bureaus, and platform rules.

The old system told the peasant he was subordinate.

The new system tells the citizen he is free while surrounding him with permissions.

That is the difference.

III. Formal Freedom Is Not the Same as Practical Freedom

American lawyers are trained to think in terms of formal rights.

Freedom of speech. Due process. Equal protection. Trial by jury. Right to counsel in criminal cases. Right to petition. Right to own property. Right to contract. Right to travel. Access to courts.

Those rights are real. They matter. A serious critique of modern government should not deny them or pretend America is equivalent to a medieval kingdom, a communist police state, or a third-world dictatorship.

The United States remains a free country in important ways.

But the existence of formal rights does not answer the practical question.

Can the ordinary citizen actually use those rights?

That is the real test.

A person may have a constitutional right to go to court, but no practical ability to afford a lawyer, pay filing fees, retain experts, survive discovery, comply with presuit conditions, and wait years for a ruling.

A person may own property, but only subject to zoning, code enforcement, environmental rules, permitting, taxation, association covenants, mortgage documents, liens, easements, impact fees, and land-use restrictions.

A person may have freedom of contract, but only within a thick structure of statutes, regulations, public-policy exceptions, mandatory disclosures, consumer-protection laws, employment rules, insurance requirements, banking rules, unconscionability doctrine, licensing regimes, and administrative enforcement.

A person may have freedom of speech, but still live under employment consequences, platform rules, professional-discipline threats, licensing pressure, school-board controls, reputational punishment, and government-adjacent coercion that may never technically qualify as censorship.

A person may be free to start a business, but only after navigating entity formation, tax registration, local licensing, insurance, employment law, wage rules, payment-processing rules, consumer claims, data obligations, contract drafting, zoning, signage rules, advertising regulations, and litigation exposure.

That is not medieval serfdom.

But it is not simple freedom either.

It is conditional freedom.

And conditional freedom is the central condition of modern American life.

IV. The Administrative State Is the New Manor

The medieval manor organized life around land, labor, hierarchy, custom, and obligation.

The modern administrative state organizes life around compliance.

That is the comparison.

The modern citizen is not usually ordered around by one identifiable person. He is governed by systems no ordinary person fully understands and no single person fully controls.

The tax system is too complex for ordinary citizens to navigate confidently.

The criminal code is too broad for ordinary citizens to know every act that might expose them to prosecution.

The regulatory state is too large for ordinary businesses to understand without professional help.

The healthcare system is too opaque for patients to understand pricing, coding, billing, networks, deductibles, denials, collection activity, and insurance coverage.

The land-use system is too technical for many property owners to know what they may do with their own land.

The court system is too procedurally dense for ordinary people to use effectively without lawyers.

The professional licensing system tells people they are free to work, but only after government grants permission.

The school system tells parents they are free, but then entangles children and families in bureaucratic structures that may be difficult to challenge.

The banking and credit systems tell citizens they are free consumers, while debt, interest, credit scoring, and financial surveillance shape the practical boundaries of choice.

A medieval serf might have looked up at the manor house and known where power lived.

A modern citizen receives a notice from an automated system.

That is not progress in every respect. Sometimes it is simply control with better stationery.

V. The Problem Is Not That Most People Are Bad

This point matters because criticism of government often gets framed as hatred of the people who work in government.

That is not the argument.

Most people who have jobs work hard. Most people in government are not evil. Most clerks, regulators, staff attorneys, municipal employees, school-board staff, agency employees, judicial assistants, legislative aides, HOA board members, and county employees are ordinary people trying to do their jobs. Many are sincere. Many are conscientious. Many believe they are helping. Many are overworked. Many are underpaid. Many are trapped in systems they did not create.

The problem is not usually individual wickedness.

The problem is institutional momentum.

Government has a built-in growth instinct because government actors are expected to act. Legislatures meet. Committees meet. Agencies meet. Boards meet. Councils meet. HOAs meet. Condo associations meet. Judicial committees meet. Professional regulators meet. School boards meet.

They do not gather to announce, “Everything is fine. No new rules are needed. We should leave people alone.”

That almost never happens.

Instead, people show up to work. They sit at computers. They attend meetings. They respond to complaints. They justify budgets. They create agendas. They produce reports. They propose solutions. They draft rules. They amend procedures. They add requirements. They respond to the last scandal. They prevent the next imagined problem. They create a new form because someone once failed to do something obvious. They add another certification because someone once abused a process. They impose another approval step because someone once made a bad decision.

This is not because they are bad people.

It is because institutions reward visible activity.

A person in government who does nothing looks useless. A person who creates a new rule looks productive. A committee that leaves citizens alone looks idle. A committee that adds a certification looks responsible. A legislature that repeals ten statutes may be accused of indifference. A legislature that passes ten new statutes can claim achievement.

This is how government grows.

Not always through tyranny. Not always through malice. Often through diligence, anxiety, career incentives, moral vanity, bureaucratic self-preservation, and the ordinary human desire to prove one’s job matters.

That is the paradox.

Good people, working hard inside bad incentives, can produce an oppressive system.

VI. The Smallest Government Is Still Government

This problem is not limited to Washington.

It exists at every level.

Federal statutes. Federal regulations. State statutes. State administrative rules. County ordinances. Municipal codes. School-board policies. Court administrative orders. Local rules. Professional regulations. Licensing rules. HOA covenants. Condominium association rules. Internal agency guidance. Clerk filing requirements. Portal requirements. Standing orders. Committee recommendations.

People often think “government” means Congress, the President, federal agencies, or maybe state legislatures.

That is too narrow.

An HOA is government in miniature. It may not be the state in constitutional theory, but it governs daily life. It tells people what color they may paint, where they may park, what they may build, what signs they may display, whether they may rent, how they must maintain property, and what assessments they must pay.

A condominium board is government in miniature.

A school board is government.

A licensing board is government.

A local permitting office is government.

A court rule committee is government.

A clerk’s office administering e-filing requirements is government.

A professional disciplinary body is government.

A hospital system intertwined with Medicare, Medicaid, insurance contracts, billing codes, and regulatory mandates may not be government in form, but the citizen experiences it as part of the same administrative reality.

That is why the ordinary citizen’s frustration does not fit neatly into constitutional-law categories. The citizen does not care whether the control comes from a federal agency, a state statute, a county rule, a municipal ordinance, a court committee, a clerk’s office, a licensing board, an HOA, or a quasi-private compliance department.

He experiences all of it as the same thing:

Someone else telling him what he must do.

VII. Government Always Has a Reason

Every rule has a story.

Someone was hurt. Someone was cheated. Someone filed a fake case. Someone built something unsafe. Someone abused a process. Someone lied. Someone polluted. Someone failed to disclose. Someone took advantage of a consumer. Someone endangered a child. Someone created risk. Someone caused embarrassment. Someone generated political pressure.

Government responds.

That response may be understandable. Sometimes it is necessary. Sometimes regulation prevents real harm. Sometimes rules protect vulnerable people. Sometimes courts need procedure. Sometimes agencies need standards. Sometimes citizens need remedies. Sometimes businesses need guardrails.

The problem is not that every rule is stupid.

The problem is accumulation.

One rule may be sensible. A thousand sensible rules can become a cage.

One certification may seem harmless. Twenty certifications turn a filing into a compliance packet.

One permitting rule may prevent a dangerous building. A maze of permitting rules can make property ownership conditional on bureaucratic patience and money.

One consumer-protection statute may deter fraud. An overexpanded consumer-protection statute can become a litigation weapon.

One presuit requirement may screen frivolous claims. A complex presuit system can block meritorious claims.

One e-filing rule may keep dockets orderly. A culture of administrative rejection can obstruct access to judges.

One HOA rule may preserve neighborhood standards. A thick set of HOA rules can turn home ownership into supervised tenancy.

Government rarely expands by announcing that it wants to reduce freedom.

It expands by announcing that it is solving a problem.

And because life always contains problems, government always has a reason to grow.

VIII. The Legal Profession Has Helped Build the Cage

Lawyers should be the profession most alert to this danger.

Instead, lawyers have often helped build the machinery.

Modern law rewards procedural aggression, scale, leverage, volume, and institutional positioning. It rewards lawyers who can weaponize statutes, stretch doctrines, multiply claims, generate pressure, and impose defense costs. It rewards government lawyers who can turn policy disagreements into enforcement actions. It rewards plaintiff’s lawyers who can identify theories first and find plaintiffs second. It rewards defense lawyers who can bury disputes in procedural expense until the merits become secondary.

This is law as machinery.

Public nuisance is a clear example. Historically, public nuisance addressed concrete interference with public rights: blocked roads, polluted waters, dangerous land uses, noxious conditions, and similar harms. But modern lawsuits increasingly try to convert public nuisance into a general-purpose regulatory theory. If a product, industry, platform, or business model allegedly causes social harm, the argument becomes: call it a nuisance and ask a court to impose relief.

That is not traditional adjudication.

That is legislation by complaint.

The same problem appears when consumer-protection statutes are stretched into general-purpose weapons. It appears when class actions are driven less by citizens independently seeking redress and more by lawyers searching for profitable theories. It appears when government enforcement actions pursue policy objectives through litigation rather than legislation. It appears when regulatory ambitions are routed through courts because elected lawmakers have not acted.

A lawsuit is supposed to resolve a dispute between parties.

It is not supposed to become an unelected regulatory program.

But modern litigation often blurs that line because the incentives reward it.

IX. Courts Are Supposed to Decide Cases, Not Govern Society

The judiciary is powerful because it is limited.

Courts decide cases. They do not run society. They do not issue advisory opinions. They do not enact broad policy because a legislature failed to act. They do not become regulatory agencies because a cause is important. They do not expand common-law doctrines into policy weapons because a defendant is unpopular.

At least, that is the theory.

Modern litigation constantly tempts courts to leave that role.

A plaintiff identifies a broad social problem. The legislature has not solved it. Agencies have not solved it. The public is upset. The issue is framed as urgent. The defendant is portrayed as powerful or unsympathetic. The complaint is drafted not merely to obtain relief for a concrete injury, but to reshape behavior across an industry.

That is government by lawsuit.

It is especially dangerous because it preserves the appearance of law. There is a complaint. There is a judge. There are motions. There are briefs. There are hearings. There may even be settlements dressed up as consent decrees.

But the function is regulatory.

The court becomes the place where policy is made without ordinary political accountability. The plaintiff’s lawyer becomes a private attorney general. The defendant becomes the object lesson. The actual plaintiff may become almost incidental — the ticket to the courthouse, not the true author of the dispute.

This is not how constitutional government is supposed to work.

If a rule should apply generally, the legislature should enact it. If an agency has authority to regulate, the agency should act within authority delegated by law. If neither has authority, the answer is not to invent a lawsuit.

The importance of an issue does not expand judicial power.

Sometimes it should restrain it.

X. The Ordinary Citizen Pays for the System

Excessive litigation is often defended in the name of ordinary people.

Sometimes that is justified. There are real injuries. Real negligence. Real fraud. Real corporate misconduct. Real government abuse. Real people who need lawyers because no one else will help them.

But litigation also creates costs that are spread across society.

Insurance premiums rise. Businesses price risk into goods and services. Doctors practice defensively. Landlords increase rent. Employers become more cautious. Products become more expensive. Small businesses avoid growth. Municipalities settle questionable claims to avoid defense costs. Public agencies spend taxpayer money managing lawsuits instead of performing core functions.

The public hears about the verdict.

It rarely sees the distributed cost.

A careful person who never files a frivolous lawsuit may still pay higher insurance premiums because other people do. A responsible business may still pay more for liability coverage because the system rewards exaggerated claims. A good doctor may still pay higher malpractice premiums because medicine is practiced inside a litigation economy. A regular family may pay more for housing, services, healthcare, and consumer goods because legal risk has been embedded into everything.

This is how modern extraction differs from feudal extraction.

The medieval tenant saw the obligation. Labor was demanded. Crops were taken. Rents were owed.

The modern citizen often never sees the extraction. It is hidden inside premiums, prices, taxes, fees, compliance costs, interest rates, litigation reserves, defensive practices, and bureaucratic delay.

That may be less dramatic than a lord taking grain from a field.

But it is still a transfer of freedom.

XI. Procedure Is the Preferred Language of Modern Control

The most important instrument of modern control is not force.

It is procedure.

Procedure sounds neutral. Sometimes it is neutral. Sometimes it is necessary. Courts need deadlines. Agencies need forms. Businesses need standards. Roads need rules. Buildings need codes. Lawyers need filing requirements.

No serious person argues for chaos.

But procedure can become its own form of rule.

When a citizen cannot assert a right without satisfying a long series of procedural conditions, the right becomes conditional. When a plaintiff cannot reach a jury without first obtaining expert corroboration he may need discovery to obtain, access to courts becomes theoretical. When a business cannot operate without administrative permission at every step, free enterprise becomes supervised enterprise. When a property owner cannot use land without navigating overlapping layers of government approval, private property becomes provisional.

This is one of the great dishonesties in modern legal culture: the system preserves the vocabulary of liberty while surrounding liberty with conditions.

You have a right to court access — after presuit compliance.

You have a right to property — subject to regulation.

You have a right to contract — subject to statutory policy.

You have a right to run a business — subject to licensing.

You have a right to build — subject to permitting.

You have a right to speak — subject to institutional consequences.

You have a right to be left alone — unless some agency, prosecutor, plaintiff’s lawyer, regulator, clerk, lender, insurer, association, school board, licensing body, or compliance department has other ideas.

The result is not medieval serfdom.

It is something different: a society where the citizen is formally free but practically managed.

XII. The Certificate of Service and the Absurdity of Ritual

Sometimes the best example of a huge problem is a small one.

Consider the certificate of service.

In the older world of litigation, a certificate of service had a real function. A lawyer served a document by mail, hand delivery, facsimile, or email. The certificate told the court and parties how service was made, when it was made, and to whom it was sent. It often included a service list, which helped everyone identify the lawyers and parties in the case.

Then e-filing arrived.

Now the portal itself creates the electronic record of filing and service. The system already shows that the document was filed. The system already sends notice. The system already records the event.

Yet lawyers still attach certificates solemnly announcing that the document was filed through the e-filing portal.

No one needed to be told that. The portal says it. The docket says it. The email notice says it. The electronic filing stamp says it.

Meanwhile, the modern certificate often provides less useful information than the old one. It may not clearly list every lawyer in the case. It may not help a court reporter identify appearances. It may not help a new lawyer understand the service structure. It may simply recite the obvious because the ritual survived after the function disappeared.

This is a perfect miniature of modern law.

The useful old thing became a useless new ritual.

Then more rituals were added.

Certification of conferral. Certification of good-faith effort. Certification regarding page limits. Certification regarding AI. Certification that citations exist. Certification that the lawyer did what lawyers were already professionally obligated to do. Certification piled on certification until the filing begins to look less like advocacy and more like a compliance packet.

The system does not ask: what function does this serve?

It asks: what additional certification can we require?

That is how bureaucracy thinks.

XIII. Clerk Review and the Blurring of Judicial Power

The same problem appears when clerks reject filings for reasons that drift beyond ministerial review.

Clerks have an important job. Dockets require order. Filing systems require standards. Case numbers, captions, fees, signatures, and basic formatting matter. Courts cannot operate if filings are chaos.

But clerks are not judges.

When filing review becomes substantive legal screening, the courthouse door is no longer controlled by judicial decision. It is controlled by administrative gatekeeping.

That distinction matters.

A court may strike a filing. A judge may deny relief. A judge may reject a proposed order. A judge may impose sanctions. A judge may require compliance with rules. But when a filing is refused at the threshold for reasons that effectively involve legal judgment, the citizen’s access to court has been burdened by administrative action before judicial review even begins.

This is not a minor inconvenience.

It is part of a larger pattern.

The modern citizen is increasingly governed not only by law, but by systems that decide whether he may even present his legal position.

Forms become gates. Portals become gates. Clerks become gates. Presuit requirements become gates. Expert affidavits become gates. Local rules become gates. Standing orders become gates. Formatting requirements become gates. Certification requirements become gates.

At some point, “access to court” becomes a phrase people repeat while standing outside the courthouse trying to figure out which procedural key opens the door.

XIV. Medical-Malpractice Presuit and Conditional Justice

Florida’s medical-malpractice presuit system illustrates the same problem in a more serious way.

The official explanation sounds reasonable. Medical-malpractice claims are serious. Doctors and hospitals should not face frivolous suits. Plaintiffs should investigate before filing. Experts should review claims. Early exchange of information may promote settlement.

That is the theory.

In practice, presuit can function as a procedural barrier to court access.

An injured patient may need expert support before filing suit. But the patient may need discovery to obtain the facts necessary to secure expert support. Treating physicians may be reluctant to accuse another physician of malpractice. Retained experts are expensive. Medical records are technical. Causation may be complex. A patient with real pain, real injury, and real suspicion of negligence may have no practical way to get through the presuit gate.

So the courthouse is technically open.

But only after the claimant satisfies a condition he may not have the resources to satisfy.

That is not medieval serfdom.

But it is conditional justice.

And conditional justice is not the same as access to courts.

A right that can be exercised only by people with enough money, enough institutional knowledge, enough expert access, and enough procedural sophistication is not a fully functioning right. It is a right filtered through bureaucracy.

That is the modern pattern.

The right exists.

The process consumes it.

XV. The New Certification Culture

The new citation-certification rules and AI-related filing requirements show the same bureaucratic instinct.

Of course lawyers should verify their citations. Of course cited cases should exist. Of course no lawyer should file fake authority. Of course lawyers should not blindly rely on generative AI, Westlaw, Lexis, Google Scholar, a law clerk, an associate, a paralegal, or anyone else.

But that was already true.

A lawyer’s signature on a filing was already supposed to mean professional responsibility. The lawyer already had duties of competence, candor, diligence, supervision, and honesty. Courts already had sanction powers. Bar discipline already existed. Motions to strike already existed. Fee-shifting already existed. Inherent authority already existed.

The filing of fake cases is not an AI problem in the deepest sense.

It is a lawyer-competence problem.

AI may generate a fake citation, but AI does not sign the motion. AI does not file through the portal. AI does not owe duties to the court. AI does not hold a law license.

The lawyer does.

When a system responds to lawyer incompetence by requiring every lawyer to include another formal certification, the system is not really solving the problem. It is spreading the administrative burden across the competent and incompetent alike.

Competent lawyers now have another ritual.

Incompetent lawyers remain incompetent.

Dishonest lawyers remain dishonest.

And the machinery expands.

XVI. Freedom of Contract and Property Rights After the Footnotes

Americans are taught that freedom of contract and private property are central features of the constitutional order.

They are.

But not in the simple way public rhetoric suggests.

Freedom of contract exists within an enormous body of statutory, regulatory, administrative, and judicial limitations. Private property exists within zoning, taxation, eminent domain, environmental regulation, code enforcement, mortgage law, association covenants, permitting requirements, development restrictions, and land-use planning.

Some of those limits are legitimate. Some are necessary. Some prevent real harm. A serious critique of overgovernment does not require pretending all regulation is irrational.

But intellectual honesty requires admitting that the old civic language no longer describes the full reality.

An American homeowner does not own property in the way schoolchildren imagine ownership. He owns a bundle of rights subject to government taxation, regulation, permitting, liens, code enforcement, association rules, and market constraints.

An American business owner does not operate in a simple world of free exchange. He operates in a supervised world of tax rules, employment law, insurance requirements, licensing regimes, consumer statutes, safety rules, payment systems, contract doctrines, and litigation exposure.

An American worker is not personally bound to a lord. But he may be bound by debt, health-insurance dependency, licensing requirements, credential inflation, housing costs, childcare costs, tax burdens, and fear of losing access to systems necessary to survive.

Modern freedom is real.

But it is heavily mortgaged.

XVII. The Administrative State Is Not Just Federal

Many people hear “administrative state” and think only of federal agencies.

That is too narrow.

The administrative state is federal, state, county, municipal, judicial, educational, professional, financial, medical, and quasi-private.

It is the federal agency issuing rules.

It is the state board controlling licenses.

It is the county permitting office.

It is the city code-enforcement officer.

It is the school district policy.

It is the professional disciplinary body.

It is the court committee drafting another rule.

It is the clerk’s office enforcing portal requirements.

It is the insurer dictating practical choices.

It is the HOA enforcing covenants.

It is the hospital billing system.

It is the bank compliance department.

It is the employer’s HR policy written in fear of litigation.

It is the platform content rule influenced by government pressure, advertiser pressure, litigation risk, or institutional cowardice.

The citizen experiences these things together.

He does not care whether the source of control is technically federal, state, local, judicial, administrative, contractual, or quasi-private. He experiences it as the same thing: another authority telling him what he must do, what he must file, what he must pay, what he must certify, what he must disclose, what he must prove, what he must obtain, and what he must not say.

That is why the old categories are losing explanatory power.

A citizen may be formally free in constitutional theory and still practically entangled in a system of permissions.

XVIII. The Monster Grows Because the Monster Must Eat

There is a reason government never stays still.

Every institution has a survival instinct.

An agency wants funding. A department wants relevance. A committee wants purpose. A board wants authority. A legislature wants accomplishments. An elected official wants achievements to advertise. A regulator wants something to regulate. A professional body wants standards to enforce. A local government wants problems to solve. An HOA wants rules to administer. A court system wants uniformity, control, predictability, and fewer embarrassments.

None of this requires evil people.

It requires only normal people inside institutions that reward expansion.

The administrative state is like a machine that converts human effort into rules.

A staff member sees a problem and proposes a rule. A committee sees a risk and proposes a certification. A legislature sees a scandal and proposes a statute. An agency sees ambiguity and proposes guidance. A board sees a complaint and proposes a policy. A clerk’s office sees inconsistency and proposes a filing requirement. A court sees bad lawyering and proposes another mandatory representation.

Everyone is doing something.

Everyone is being productive.

Everyone can explain the reason.

Everyone can point to the abuse that supposedly justified the change.

And the citizen gets another rule.

Then another.

Then another.

This is how bureaucracy becomes monstrous without any single person intending monstrosity.

The monster grows because the monster must eat.

XIX. The Positive Possibility: Work Should Serve Human Life, Not Rule Production

There is a positive side to this critique.

Most people want to be useful. Most people want their work to matter. Most people do not want to sit in an office pretending to be necessary. They want to help, solve problems, support families, earn dignity, and contribute.

That is good.

The problem is that many modern institutions convert that good human impulse into rule production.

If a person’s job is to regulate, he regulates.

If a committee’s job is to propose procedures, it proposes procedures.

If a board’s job is to govern, it governs.

If a legislature’s job is to legislate, it legislates.

If an HOA’s job is to manage neighborhood behavior, it manages neighborhood behavior.

If a court committee’s job is to prevent mistakes, it drafts another rule.

That is not because human beings are bad. It is because the institutional design channels their work toward control.

This raises a larger question that goes beyond law: whether modern society has confused work with productivity and productivity with rule creation.

Maybe not every job needs to be forty, fifty, or sixty hours of institutional output every week. Maybe not every employee needs to justify his existence by creating new obligations for everyone else. Maybe not every committee needs an annual product. Maybe not every board meeting needs new business. Maybe not every legislative session needs new laws. Maybe not every procedural failure needs another certification.

A freer society would require something deeply countercultural: institutions willing to do less.

That does not mean laziness.

It means restraint.

Restraint is work. Repeal is work. Simplification is work. Refusing to regulate is work. Leaving people alone is work. Trusting citizens is work. Trusting lawyers to satisfy existing duties is work. Telling a committee “no new rule is necessary” is work.

The highest form of government competence may not be the creation of rules.

It may be the discipline not to create them.

XX. Reform, Not Explosion

A system this large cannot be fixed by slogans.

It also should not be romanticized as something that can be solved by anger alone. A serious society does not answer administrative overgrowth with chaos. It answers it with constitutional discipline, institutional humility, political courage, legal clarity, and cultural restraint.

The answer is not lawlessness.

The answer is better law.

Legislatures should repeal obsolete statutes as actively as they pass new ones.

Agencies should sunset regulations unless they are affirmatively justified.

Courts should enforce separation of powers.

Judges should distinguish legal disputes from policy projects.

Clerks should administer filings, not decide legal issues.

Professional regulators should punish real incompetence instead of imposing rituals on everyone.

Court systems should reduce filing clutter rather than add certifications.

Presuit barriers should be reexamined when they block real access to courts.

HOAs and local governments should be forced to justify rules against actual necessity, not mere preference.

Public nuisance should return to recognizable public-right interference, not become a theory for every public problem.

Consumer-protection statutes should not become all-purpose litigation grenades.

Lawyers should stop applauding every new procedural requirement as if more procedure automatically means more justice.

The proper response to bureaucracy is not anarchy.

It is constitutional adulthood.

XXI. The Supreme Court Has Started to Notice

Recent Supreme Court decisions show that at least part of the judiciary understands the problem.

When courts say agencies cannot receive automatic deference merely because statutory language is ambiguous, they are not deciding a technical dispute about agency expertise. They are asking who decides what the law means.

When courts say Congress must speak clearly before agencies decide questions of vast economic and political significance, they are not merely slowing regulation. They are insisting that major policy decisions be made by politically accountable lawmakers.

When courts say the government cannot avoid a civil jury right merely by routing certain enforcement actions through administrative tribunals, they are not indulging procedural nostalgia. They are recognizing that constitutional rights do not disappear because agencies prefer efficiency.

These decisions do not abolish the administrative state.

They do not solve the problem.

They do not restore some lost world of simple liberty.

But they identify the central issue: modern government constantly tries to convert constitutional questions into administrative questions.

Who decides?

Who has authority?

What process is required?

What rights remain?

What must Congress actually authorize?

What belongs in court?

What belongs before a jury?

What belongs to the citizen?

Those are not technicalities.

Those are the architecture of freedom.

XXII. Why Lawyers Should Care

Lawyers should care about this more than anyone.

A society governed by too much bureaucracy eventually stops needing lawyers in the best sense and starts needing compliance technicians.

A real lawyer asks: Who has authority? What does the text say? What is the cause of action? What is the remedy? What is the burden of proof? What are the limits of the doctrine? What does the Constitution permit? What facts can be proved?

A compliance technician asks: Which box do I check?

The legal profession is drifting toward the second model.

That is why the multiplication of certifications matters. That is why presuit barriers matter. That is why e-filing rituals matter. That is why public nuisance expansion matters. That is why government-by-lawsuit matters. That is why clerk overreach matters. That is why administrative adjudication matters. That is why professional licensing matters. That is why regulatory sprawl matters.

These are not separate complaints.

They are symptoms of one condition: legal judgment being displaced by procedural administration.

The lawyer’s role should be to resist that displacement.

Not recklessly. Not theatrically. Not by pretending all government is illegitimate or all regulation is wrong.

But by insisting on first principles.

Courts decide cases.

Legislatures make laws.

Agencies act within delegated authority.

Clerks administer filings; judges decide legal issues.

Lawyers verify their work.

Common-law doctrines have limits.

Constitutional rights are not mere slogans.

Access to courts must be real, not theoretical.

Procedure exists to serve justice, not replace it.

XXIII. Are We Freer Than Medieval Tenants?

So, are Americans today freer than medieval serfs, unfree tenants, or rural subjects living under feudal authority?

In formal legal terms, yes.

Obviously yes.

But that answer is incomplete.

A medieval serf’s unfreedom was obvious because it was personal, hereditary, and visible. The modern citizen’s loss of freedom is harder to see because it is impersonal, procedural, and dispersed across thousands of systems.

The serf had a lord.

The modern citizen has many masters and is told none of them is really in charge.

The serf owed labor.

The modern citizen owes taxes, fees, premiums, interest, compliance, documentation, licensing, and procedural obedience.

The serf was bound to land.

The modern citizen may be bound to debt, employment dependency, insurance dependency, licensing requirements, housing costs, school districts, health networks, and regulatory systems.

The serf needed permission from a lord.

The modern citizen needs permission from agencies, boards, clerks, lenders, insurers, associations, platforms, employers, and courts.

The serf knew the name of the man who controlled him.

The modern citizen gets an email from an automated system.

That does not make the modern American a serf.

But it should make us more careful with the word “free.”

XXIV. Conclusion: Bureaucracy Is Not Freedom

The United States remains a free country in important ways. That should not be denied.

But a free country can become less free without abolishing elections, repealing the Bill of Rights, or placing citizens under hereditary lords.

It can become less free by making ordinary life conditional on permission.

It can become less free by turning rights into procedural puzzles.

It can become less free by pricing people out of court.

It can become less free by allowing agencies to govern through ambiguous delegations.

It can become less free by allowing lawsuits to become regulatory weapons.

It can become less free by letting clerks, committees, portals, certifications, and administrative rules control access to judges.

It can become less free by multiplying laws until no ordinary citizen can know what obedience requires.

It can become less free while still calling itself free.

That is the danger.

The point is not that modern Americans are literally medieval serfs. They are not.

The point is that freedom is not measured only by the absence of a manor, a castle, or a lord.

Freedom is measured by whether a citizen can actually live, work, speak, own, build, contract, worship, raise a family, defend himself, and seek justice without being trapped in a web of permissions he cannot understand and cannot escape.

By that measure, the question is no longer absurd.

It may be one of the most important questions we can ask.