It has been suggested that litigation is a substitute for violence. Stated another way, but for the availability of an adversarial forum in which to address grievances, injured parties, damaged parties, aggrieved parties might otherwise resort to violence. As such, it is certainly plausible that citizens may perceive our adversarial legal system as the only means of expressing those feelings, those complaints and those very urgent demands that might otherwise have no "lawful" means of expression except violence.
In some ways this idea at least prompts us to re-think or redefine our views of the meaning of "violence." This question is not limited to "gun" violence. Nor is this inquiry necessarily limited to any commonly-held view of "violence." Indeed, according to certain well-established theories of "violence," like Marshall Rosenberg’s theory of "Non Violent Communication" (NVC), most of the practices and processes that occur during a typical adversarial litigation or trial are clearly "violent."
