Politics & Law
NewsOnScale Staff
October 24, 2026
Thomas Jefferson was not subtle about his concerns regarding the legal profession's accumulation of power. Writing about the federal judiciary, he warned: "Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit, by consolidation first, and then corruption. That body, like gravity, ever acting with noiseless foot and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the governments into the jaws of that which feeds them."
He was talking about judges. But the observation applies equally to the broader legal class that has come to dominate American government at every level.
What the founders built — and what replaced it
The founders designed a republic governed by citizen representatives — farmers, merchants, tradesmen, and landowners who would serve temporarily and return to their ordinary lives. The idea was that the people governing would be the same people living under the laws they passed.
What exists today is something different. The American government — executive, legislative, and judicial — is dominated by attorneys at a level the founders never intended and explicitly warned against.
As of the most recent Congress, roughly 40% of members of the House and Senate are lawyers by training. The Supreme Court is composed entirely of lawyers. The cabinet routinely includes attorneys in most senior positions. The regulatory agencies that govern American commerce, communications, finance, and technology are staffed and led predominantly by people with law degrees.
John Adams wrote that "the only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." He designed a system of checks specifically because he understood that any professional class — legal or otherwise — given unchecked institutional power would use it to serve itself.
What that looks like in practice today
The Director of National Intelligence who just signed a memo warning of Iranian assassination plots — a lawyer. The CIA Director receiving that memo — a lawyer. The Secretary of State it was addressed to — a lawyer. The congressional members who will respond to it — many of them lawyers.
The judges who determine whether platform suppression of political candidates is legal — appointed for life, accountable to no election, trained exclusively in the law and its procedures.
The BAR association — a private credentialing body — determines who may and may not represent parties in court. It is not a government agency. It is not democratically accountable. It controls access to the legal system the way a guild controls access to a trade.
The result is a system where ordinary Americans must pay members of a credentialed private class simply to access the constitutional rights the founders said were self-evident and unalienable.
Jefferson wrote: "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
The chains of the Constitution were designed to bind government. The legal class has spent two centuries learning how to interpret those chains in ways that expand their own power and the power of the institutions they serve.
The Bible's observation
The warning is not only American. Luke 11:46 records: "And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not one of the burdens with one of your fingers."
The burden of navigating the American legal system falls entirely on the people least equipped to navigate it. Filing fees, procedural requirements, discovery costs, and the complexity of court rules — all of it creates a system where justice is effectively rationed by the ability to pay for legal representation.
A working American who is wronged and wants to seek remedy in court faces a system designed by lawyers for lawyers. The procedures, the language, the filing requirements, the local rules — none of it is designed for the citizen the Constitution was written to protect.
What the founders would recognize
Madison wrote: "It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it."
Power encroaches. That is its nature. The founders knew it because they had just fought a revolution against a government that had allowed one class — the crown and its appointees — to accumulate power without accountability.
They built a system specifically designed to prevent that accumulation. Separation of powers. Checks and balances. Term limits on the executive. Elections for the legislature. Jury trials for citizens.
What they did not fully anticipate was a professional class that would learn to work within all three branches simultaneously — writing the laws, arguing before the courts that interpret them, and staffing the agencies that enforce them.
Jefferson warned that the judiciary was engulfing government insidiously. He was right about the direction. He underestimated the speed.
The practical consequence
A declared presidential candidate representing himself in federal court against five of the most powerful technology companies in the world is not an anomaly. He is what the system produces when an ordinary American — not a lawyer, not a credentialed insider, not a member of the professional class — decides to exercise the constitutional rights the founders said were his by birth.
He files his own complaints. He learns the procedures. He pays the fees. He navigates a system designed to make that navigation difficult enough that most people give up.
The founders said the people were sovereign. The legal class has spent two centuries building a system where sovereignty requires a law degree to exercise.
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