Law as Income Redistribution

So, in considering whether law is a democratic force--a biggish topic, I thought I'd consider some bits and pieces of the puzzle and then bring it all together.

Claims in our (American) legal system can be broken down into several categories.

Basically:

(1) the other guy took something that's really mine
(2) the other guy went back on a promise
(3) the other guy was so mean/nasty/negligent that I got hurt

In the end, by and large somebody gets money from someon else to right a wrong. It is interesting what you can't make a claim for. You can't, for example, say that because I didn't go to college, my life turned to crap. You can't say I'm poor because the company I worked for shut down a factory. You can make a claim of racial or sex discrimination, but you can't make a claim of economic or class discrimination. The legal system will also not (in general) provide you with redress for claims that the government screwed up or that a politician broke a promise.

Because the goal of most legal claims is to take from one party and give to another, it can be argued that one major way in which income is redistributed in the United States is through lawsuits. Of course many lawsuits involve redistributing income between large corporations. However, most torts and workers compensation law result in the flow of money from ordinary responsible middle class citizens to insurance companies and then back down to lower middle class and poor people.

So, does that kind of distribution make us a better democracy? Is some kind of lack of massive inequality of income necessary for a democracy? Would it be better to redistribute wealth on another basis? How did the law become so central to our particular society?