It's good to hear from someone aware. Marrying a lawyer after helping that person pass the Bar, I know a few things. In my divorce later on I knew I could not attack my spouse, but I attacked the attorney representing my spouse. What a gold mine that was. If you are interested about the history of layers and how they were perceived as a scourge on society, here is something I wrote about it:

The English throne is described by our Declaration of Independence as practicing widespread tyranny. And, it is well known the English government used its lawyers and forces of arms to silence any dissidents that spoke out against the throne. Lawyers practiced the “art of rhetoric” by coloring the law to achieve their ends. So widespread was this practice that two hundred seventy-three years ago, the English writer Jonathan Swift described lawyers as "men bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black and black is white, according as they are paid." The profession of law has not been looked upon approving kindness. In fact, 400 years ago, in one of William Shakespeare plays, one of his characters; Dick the butcher in King Henry VI, said "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." This quoted expression was a very popular sentiment in those days.

Actually, this popular sentiment has a much longer history. It originates some 2200 years ago when serious and tradition-minded Romans were troubled by the behavior of lawyers of their day. Yes, some things never change. History tells us this many times over. What we are witnessing today in law, is the result of the allowable practice of law. The Romans were so concerned by lawyers’ opprobrious effect on public morale that they attempted to curb their influence. In 204 BC, the Roman Senate passed a law prohibiting lawyers from plying their trade for money. A man skilled in the law might volunteer to defend a friend or a cause in the law courts, but he was forbidden to accept a fee for his services.

The lawyers soon found a way to get around the newly passed law, and there was no method to enforce that law effectively. As the Roman Republic declined and became more democratic, it became increasingly difficult to keep lawyers in check and prevent them from accepting fees under the table. Alas, many young men, with more “ambition than virtue", flocked to the practice of law.

Successful Roman lawyers were skilled in the 'art of rhetoric'. The Greeks invented rhetoric and made a science of it and it became the science of persuasion. The Romans imported many cultural ideals from the Greeks and the rhetoricians were able to establish schools of rhetoric in Rome. Soon, tradition-minded Romans saw these rhetoric schools as a subversive influence an assault on Roman morals and customs. It was because falsehoods could be convincingly argued where every repugnant tactic of deception, evasion, and misrepresentation was used to vilify the opponent for the purpose of winning the argument. To the Romans, it was if Fraus, the two-faced goddess of deception, was released to destroy Rome itself.

Early in the 2nd century BC, Cato, the Censor, once commented after listening to some of these clever Greeks that it was virtually impossible to know what was true and what was not. Cato’s views were not the first commentaries to be uttered about the rhetoricians. Two centuries before, Plato had referred to them as notorious for "making the worse appear the better cause." In 161 BC, the Roman Senate ordered all of these Greek schools of rhetoric closed and their teachers expelled from Rome.

Alas, that provided only a momentary halt to the problem. The rhetoricians and the lawyers soon surfaced in greater forces than ever. Once again, the valorous Roman censors, who were Rome's official guardians of public morality, ordered all the rhetoric schools closed in 92 BC. However, this latest cure was insufficient for stopping the cancer. All the attempts to save the Roman republic were worthy, but futile acts that ultimately had no effect in stopping Rome’s fall. The lawyers fed upon and exasperated the downward plunge of Roman civilization. Just as they are doing now.

The legal system has profited immensely as a result of institutionalized programs to emasculate our laws and society. We are witnessing the consequential effect on our civilization and, as a nation, are falling as Rome did two thousand years ago. Our legal system has become a system of lawyers, run entirely by lawyers, solely for the enrichment of lawyers. It is a malignant system that threatens all of our freedoms, and which does not have the will to cure itself.

Yes, we have the original 13th Amendment. Now, let it be recognized and enforced. Our forefathers had very good reason and prescient cause for creating it.