I've been re-watching the science fiction series, "Farscape" over the last few weeks (if you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth watching on Netflix).
In one episode, the characters find themselves embroiled in trouble on the planet of Litigaria, a planet with libraries' worth of horribly convoluted and complex laws... due to the fact that 90% of the planet's population are lawyers, and also that the ruling bodies are law firms.
When trying to figure out how the laws became so out of hand, they found that there was originally one set or book of laws... all of the other books exist merely to expand on what's in here... As more and more people devoted themselves to the law, the law had to grow more complex to justify them all.
Eventually, our heroes get out of trouble and defeat the villainous lawyer/head of state by referring back to the original set of laws (which had nearly been forgotten).
I have to wonder if there are any parallels between the fictional world, and our own nearly incomprehensible volumes of laws, the growing numbers of members in the political leadership that use them to their advantage, and the fact that too many of them have lost site of our original laws -- the US Constitution.
Just a thought...
I keep hoping that something like this would happen to the legal profession. Litigaria would be the best of the possible outcomes.
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