Great analysis. Even though we see the warts all of the time, I'm so incredibly impressed by "law," and I didn't get to this point until I was well out of law school.
Why I'm impressed is how well the law holds itself together in the face of the massive weight of influences that have every reason in the world to try to corrupt it. It's just all too easy to speculate (or read historically) how easy it is to corrupt this kind of power (religion, violence, fear etc) and how this general notion of "No, we're going to dress up like grownups and do our damndest to figure this out with reasoning" is so great.
Why I'm impressed is how well the law holds itself together in the face of the massive weight of influences that have every reason in the world to try to corrupt it. It's just all too easy to speculate (or read historically) how easy it is to corrupt this kind of power (religion, violence, fear etc) and how this general notion of "No, we're going to dress up like grownups and do our damndest to figure this out with reasoning" is so great.