This post continues the thread about the Constitution and the idea of better understanding the intended role of judges and the judicial branch of government.
Thomas Sowell writing about Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Dismantling America (p. 286):
Holmes understood that a Supreme Court justice was not there to favor some people or even to prescribe what was best for society. He had a very clear sense of what the role of a judge was — and wasn’t.
Justice Holmes saw his job to be “to see that the game is played according to the rules whether I like them or not.”
That was because the law existed for the citizens, not for lawyers and judges, and the citizens had to know what the rules were, in order to obey them.
Legislators existed to change the law.
Holmes wrote that he did not “think it desirable that the judges should undertake to renovate the law.” If the law needed changing, that was what the democratic process was for. Indeed, that was what the separation of powers in legislative, executive and judicial branches by the Constitution of the United States was for.
Another judge said to Holmes while riding in a carriage: “Do justice, sir. Do justice.”
Holmes had the carriage stopped. “That is not my job,” he said. “My job is to apply the law.”