Here is a short quote from someone you have never heard of; Elise Groulx Diggs, co-chairman of the International Criminal Bar. The source for the quote is here, though I read it in the International Bar Association's dead tree magazine.
Law is an amazingly transformational tool and it doesn't take that many people to bring about change.
Whether or not you agree with the particular changes she's talking about doesn't really matter that much. Law is there to set limits to human vices, not to promote human virtues. This not least because humans are in closer agreement as to the former than the latter. Every law diminishes liberty and even a good one is a necessary evil. A bad one (and most are now bad ones) is just evil.
To put it another way, Law itself is a prison and the fewer people who ever see its bars, the better. That 'not that many' people can transform the lives of the rest of us by force of law is undoubtedly true. It happens all the time, but does not strike me as a thing to be happy about.
The lady has had a distinguished career and, from my brief research, has done a lot of good in this world. I am sure she is very admirable and I don't single her out because I think she is in any way to blame for our situation. It's just that her words sum up crisply, for me, the great mistake about the nature of Law that is making the Free World less so by the day.
The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
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