In a current New York magazine essay, Jonathan Chait introduces a word coined by his fellow journalist, Jonathan Rauch, who writes at the Brookings Institution: “Demosclerosis.” Rauch argues that special interests, including governmental agencies themselves, inevitably start to strangle change and innovation in defense of the status quo. The system of checks and balances placed in the United States Constitution by our Founding Fathers intuitively anticipates this propensity for a hardening of democratic arteries, even though its authors didn’t have a name for this process.

Anyone who has labored at a large corporation or inside an expansive bureaucracy comes to recognize they are trapped within a feudal system masquerading as a hierarchy. Barons and dukes in the corner offices have carved out quasi-independent fiefdoms. This embrace of medieval organizational structures extends to guild solidarity. For nearly 500 years, both craftsmen and merchants formed guilds to provide apprenticeship training, restrict competition, control quality standards and set pricing for their goods. We often overlook the benefits that flow from allegiance to a guild’s efforts to protect its members’ welfare.

Master craftsmen were required to produce “masterpieces” for entry into a guild. As skilled work was replaced with industrial manufacturing, this impulse to band together assumed modern forms – labor unions, professional associations and informal social alliances. Colorado is witnessing a clash of two seemingly separate, but actually interrelated, guild conflicts at the moment. Each involves a resistance to and resentment of oversight.

The Colorado District Attorneys Association has chosen to criticize Gov. Jared Polis for his commutation of the 110-year sentence imposed on the truck driver responsible for an Interstate-70 wreck that killed four and injured more. The thrust of their objections seems to be that Polis should have allowed the legal process to play out before intruding. On the surface this complaint makes some sense. Why not permit a judge to reach a conclusion and make a recommendation? Yet the judge who imposed the original sentence regretted that mandatory minimums in Colorado law required him to impose a sentence he found unconscionable. Tens of thousands of Coloradans agreed.

The Colorado Constitution affords the Governor the power to pardon, commute or even exonerate accused or convicted individuals when such an intervention serves the interests of justice. This is an essential check on a legal system that can and does disregard fairness upon occasion. Governor Polis could have remained mute and allowed months of recriminations and media fascination to dominate this tragedy. Or he could choose to slice through the Gordian knot of legal bickering, as he did. Whether he settled on a reasonable sentence can be debated, but his authority to resolve the situation is unassailable. Whether he took a call from Kim Kardashian is irrelevant.

Who would have benefited from months, perhaps years, of legal maneuvering? Apparently, Colorado’s District Attorneys resent being second guessed. Rather than bellyaching on behalf of their guild, perhaps they should form a task force that recommends reform of the mandatory minimum statutes that forced such an absurd and onerous sentence in the first place. A parallel, although more mystifying, dispute has been the trail of complaints regarding misbehavior within the Colorado Department of Law – specifically, allegations of sexual harassment on the part of one or more unnamed judges. This scandal has roots that can be traced back over several years. A Chief Justice retired suddenly. Payments that appear suspiciously like hush money were made in the face of threats to expose cover-ups. The stench is overpowering.

To the credit of new Chief Justice Boatright, he has committed to getting to the bottom of this story. Although law firms have been hired to investigate, it’s not clear whether their eventual reports will be made public and considerable skepticism exists about the quality of any internal inquiry. The Commission on Judicial Discipline, which wants to conduct an independent inquiry, has approached the Joint Budget Committee for funding that should normally have been provided by the Supreme Court. Boatright testified at the budget hearing to support the Commission’s request without clarifying why his budget couldn’t be tapped for that purpose.

Ultimately, names will be named and reputations will be stained. Guild members, in this case our judges, would prefer these reports originate outside their guildhall (courtrooms). Along the urbanized Front Range, the identity of District Attorneys and judges comes with a degree of anonymity. In rural communities, however, these individuals are well known and readily recognized – at the gas station or in the grocery store. Their decisions influence the lives and fortunes of their neighbors. Consequently, there is a natural propensity to keep what happens in their offices inside the office. This can lead to a double standard that blinds those inside the guild to violations of professional standards. (We all need someone looking over our shoulder).

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.