The Judicial Nature of Church Governance

Over on Times & Seasons, Nate Oman has an article about the governance structure of the Church. His assertion is that the Church's hierarchy is fundamentally judicial in nature, rather than administrative or pastoral. Oman, who teaches law at William & Mary School of Law, writes:

Read the Doctrine and Covenants on Church government, and what you will see is that most of the discussion about the offices of bishop or stake president have to do with judging. Indeed, in some ways the ur-institution seems to be neither bishopric, stake presidency, first presidency, nor even Quorum of the Twelve. Rather, it is the stake High Council. (Indeed, I believe that the High Council predates both the first presidency and the stake presidency, with stake presidents initially serving as presidents of the High Council, rather than as presidents of a separate quorum.) Furthermore, what the High Councils seem to have spent most of their time doing during the first three or four generations of the Church was adjudicating disputes between members. Early Mormons seem to have been a quarrelsome bunch (further evidence of post-Puritanism, perhaps?), and the ecclesiastical structure of the Church seems to have been largely about chandelling [sic] this litigious energy into priesthood-controlled fora.

Oman further opines that the judicial role of the Church has waned since the days of Lorenzo Snow, when the Church court system was transferred to the secular court system, and that some of the contributing factors to this change were the modernization and industrialization of the West. The full text of the article, with some interesting legal experience from LDS attorneys in the comments thread, can be found here.