Attacks On Lawyers: A threat to democracy
In Shakespeare’s day, lawyers were not very popular, thus the rebel’s cry ‘First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers’. Understandably, because the lawyers were largely employed in maintaining the exploitation and repression that enabled the less than one per cent to live in a world of wealth and pleasure denied to the great majority.
Today, while the one per cent still live with wealth and pleasure, lawyers are often on the other side, challenging the policies and practices of states and large corporations that destroy the environment and create social and economic conditions that threaten the well-being of hundreds of millions. Lawyers are resisting what has become an onslaught against democratic traditions and institutions in many countries.