Jon Johanning wrote:
>
> Even when the world was much less complex, there were lawyers, and the
> complaints that they just made things more difficult to justify their
> own employment, and "made the worse case appear the better" by lying,
> and so on, date back to ancient Athens (the Sophists were the lawyers of
> their time), at least.
Not quite true. In the Athenian democracy every man (no participation by women) was (and had to be) his own lawyer (or his own prosecuting attorney: there was no state prosecutor). The sophists arose in several parts of the hellenic world, and as far as I can determine in my recent reading of greek history, there is some debate among historians re whether the new demand for education generated the sophists or whether the sophists generated the demand for education.
The juries for cases (numbering in the hundreds) were selected by lot from a volunteer roster of about 6000, and court cases (both what we would call torts and what we would call criminal cases) resembled a session of the House of Representatives than a modern court.
Political and "legal" life in Athens, then, revolved around the power of the unaided human voice to persuade hundreds or thousands in a single daytime session of the assembly or of a jury. Training in rhetoric (invented by the Sophists) was then the substance of civic education. The Sophists have suffered greatly by 2500 years of slander by enemies of democracy and from friends of democracy duped by that slander.
Carrol
P.S. I propose a put up or shut up experiment for those who really think lawyers are not necessary. Deliberately commit a misdemeanor. (Choose carefully one that only involves a fine you can afford and no jail time.) Then defend yourself.)
And the fact that the the prosecuting attorney is a lawyer is irrelevant: he/she is not in essence a lawyer but an agent of the state. And to whine about his/her legal skill is as absurd as to whine about the fact that cops are in essence strike-breakers.