

Maybe, but we also got Reaganomics and the beginning of that cultural shift towards greed being good. I suppose you could make a case that we also had HW Bush, the last repub afaik to actually raise taxes on the wealthy, helping Clinton balance the budget in the 90s.
Also had the Satanic Panic, though that seems to come back around every so often no matter what.
The purpose of a legal system is to provide stability to a society, so that a person can safely pursue long term goals over their lifetime in a predictable environment.
The most effective way to accomplish this is to make a system where laws originate from a process where people are allowed to have some say in the creation of the laws that will apply to them, and the laws are then applied uniformly, consistently and fairly to all people regardless of background.
Our system partially fulfils this.