Philip K. Howard, a graduate of Taft prep school, Yale and the University of Virginia School of Law, says he never wore "white bucks." This 1950s campus fashion waned before he matriculated. Those buckskin shoes were popular among young blades destined to become "whiteshoe lawyers" at prestigious "white-shoe law firms," such as Covington and Burling, where Howard, 76, is senior counsel.

He also is a genteel inveigher against the coagulation of American society, which is saturated with law. In his new book "Saving Can-Do: How to Revive the Spirit of America," he argues that law's proper role is preventing transgressions by authorities, not micromanaging choices so minutely that red tape extinguishes individual responsibility and the social trust that individualism engenders.

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