Social activists and some political leaders increasingly prefer legal to legislative action. What insulates the process from critical scrutiny is public respectability. Of course, there are periodic outbursts against over-zealous lawyers, silly lawsuits and outrageous fees. This attitude is shortsighted. We are quietly delegating our democracy in unwise ways.
Complex disagreements become simple questions of right and wrong.
We should be wary. Government policies need to achieve a certain level of fairness, popular acceptance and balance among legitimate, if inconsistent, public desires. The more we remove conflicts from politics, the less likely this is. Take gun control. 45 percent of U.S. households have guns, reports a recent Washington Post survey.