Dostoyevsky may be forgiven for inventing such a daunting, haunting figure. Dostoyevsky wrote fiction, and everyone knows it. The Myth of the Inquisition was the work of Protestants and others united at about the time of the Enlightenment's deification of scientific reason. Their design was to turn people against revealed religion and, especially, the Roman Catholic Church. They transformed the Inquisitions into a flaming scourge which swept through Europe, its sanguinary effects touching virtually every hamlet, every family.
Liberals are, to be sure, inventing the past and remembering a hoped-for future.
But they are talking about the same council that I am. It is a throw-away term of opprobrium. We place professional advocates in the pit, facing off against each other before an unbiased, non-partisan judicial officer who has the final say about using the coercive powers of the state. The favorable contrast is to European, mostly Catholic, countries in which judicial officers perform a critical investigative, even prosecutorial, function. The Myth of the Inquisition may be losing its bite.