In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the influence lawyers had on American government-an influence that has surely grown exponentially since his time. Lawyers, he thought, are the ones to whom the people turn in the absence of the rich, the royal, or the noble. They are uniquely well situated to check the excesses of democracy. Their habits of order and concern for formalism render them opposed to the passions of the multitude. They secretly scorn popular government and maintain the last vestiges of aristocracy in democratic regimes. In such regimes they align by their interests with the many, but by their habits and tastes with the few. They are a link between the claims of democracy and aristocracy.
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