please welcome the bbc 2019 reflecturer, jonathan sumption. [ applause ] >> good evening. when the french political writer alexis detovville visited the united states in the 1830s, one of the things that struck him most forcibly was the dominant place occupied by lawyers in the public life of the nation. in his classic account of early american democracy, he suggested that lawyers as a class had succeeded to the beliefs and influence of the old landed arrest to go race. they shared habits, tastes, and above all shared its contempt for popular opinion. the more we reflect upon all that occurs in the united states, he wrote, the more we shall find that the lawyers as a body form the most powerful, if not the only counter poise to the democratic element in the constitution. there is scarcely any political question in the united states that does not ultimately resolve itself into a judicial question. there was only one other country that he could think of where the legal elite enjoyed a comparable influence over public affairs. and that country was britain. a new addition of d