Yesterday, I posted about the tendency of priests and politicians to expand their roles beyond what they are really useful for.
Thinking about it, it occurs to me that by far the worst offenders in this manner are lawyers. I have offended more than a few lawyers by saying this, but their job is to help people negotiate conflicts they can't work out in a reasonable manner otherwise. For the most part, neither the law nor lawyers should interfere in human life. For the most part they shouldn't interfere with matters of law: the very existence of law depends on the ability of people to work legal matters out without resorting to lawyers 99.99 percent of the time.
Anytime lawyers and judge successfully expand their realm of influence, our society becomes a little less workable.
One egregious example of this is what I used to call judge disease when I was a social worker. Judge disease is the delusion judges sometimes get that sitting on the bench has given them some special insight into politics, morality or human nature. You can't actually say this to them but you sometimes want to say, "Get over yourself you pompous old twit; your narrow and sheltered life does not qualify you to be an expert on anything but the law."
No comments:
Post a Comment