Are There Too Many Lawyers in the U.S.?

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court has served more than 20 years. In a recent interview Parade Magazine Intelligence Report asked, You’ve said that there are too many lawyers in the U.S. Why do you think that?

Scalia replied, I don’t mean to criticize lawyers, just the need for so many lawyers. Lawyers don’t dig ditches or build buildings. When a society requires such a large number of its best minds to conduct the unproductive enterprise of the law, something is wrong with the legal system.

Ed.: Could lawyers be colonizing [euphemism for corrupting] the Senate and parasitizing the economy?

Is there a role for politics in our judicial system?

Scalia replied, None whatever. The absolute worst violation of the judge’s oath is to decide a case based on a partisan political or philosophical basis, rather than what the law requires.

Ed.: What Scalia was not asked and did not say is that the preponderance of these parasites in elected office is dangerous. Consider whether it would be wise to elect barbers to over half the seats in the U.S. Senate and then have them exercise advice and consent over appointments of barbers to a separate but equal Supreme Tonsorial Salon.

The concentration of power in a single profession is more than monopolistic, it tends to be corrupting and fosters self-serving results. We are unwittingly creating a nobility within a country created expressly, among other purposes, to ban a noble class.

The Supreme Court, by the way, would better represent America if it had a few barbers or hairdressers among its lawyers. By the way, appointment of only lawyers to the Supreme Court is not a requirement of any law, it is one of the results of too many lawyers in government.