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Your question actually touches on an important and hotly disputed theme of American history. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in DEMOCRACY OF AMERICA that the legal profession is the closest thing to an aristocracy that the United States has. In his time lawyers were not so generally reviled as they are now -- though they were reviled, of course -- but now we have a nation that despises the legal profession in toto but reveres some individual lawyers, such as Thurgood Marshall (former civil rights lawyer and Supreme Court Justice), John Marshall (greatest Chief Justice ever), Archibald Cox (hero of Watergate and great law professor), and Atticus Finch (fictional hero of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD).
It may have something to do with the American tendency to think of law instrumentally, as something to be used actively to respond to social problems or to promote economic growth, etc., etc. -- if you use law that way, and do so consistently, you'd better have lawyers around who can do it well.
But, as I say, it's a hotly disputed issue that shows no sign of an early or easy resolution.
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