Parasitic(?) Lawyers

There's been a kerfuffle in the blogosphere about the social value of lawyers. Ward Farnsworth's guest post at the Volokh site apparently started it, Classical Values and others joined in, and Instapundit linked.

Nowhere in my (unthorough) scanning of these posts and comments did I notice a reference to Warren Burger's warning:

We may well be on our way to a society overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts, and brigades of judges in numbers never before contemplated.

I gather that Burger is not regarded as an eminent Chief Justice, but you'd think that his position alone would give his comment classic status among anti-lawyer critics.

Maybe Burger is anathema to Republicans because he presided over Roe v. Wade, and anathema to Democrats because he was a Republican.

Addendum 20091127. The Time cover about lawyers is here; the cover story is here.