The reason you live in a stable democracy with a historically unprecedented standard of living is that generations of unhappy and frustrated people made it so. It certainly isn't thanks to the people satisfied with the status quo, who maintained faith in either the virtue of the Church or the Crown. Progress depends on unreasonable people doing unreasonable things like killing monarchs and nailing theses to church doors.

>It’s not perfect, but the idea that judges should not use judgement and compassion in the application of the law just seems nuts.

I agree with you. They should. Absolutism in terms of the law reduces to fascism, and even the "code is law" crowd discover religion as soon as they realize code can have loopholes just as laws can. But we shouldn't assume by default that the courts will act fairly, because they won't, they will act in their own interests as all power structures do, and fairly only when fairness isn't a threat to those interests.

For the same reason we shouldn't assume software created by humans and controlled by the those very same power structures would be any better.