Chain of Liberty

February 2014:

“There is one general observation I would make: that the end of government is the happiness of every individual so far as is consistent with the good of the whole. To attain this end is impossible without laws and their due execution. ‘Tis necessary that laws should be established, else judges and juries must go according to their reason, that is, their will; and this is in the strictest sense arbitrary. On this reason, I take to be grounded that well-known maxim, that the judge should never be the legislator. Because, then, the will of the judge would be the law; and this tends directly to a state of slavery. The rules and orders of a state must be known and must be certain, that people may know how to act or else they are equally uncertain, as if the law depended upon the arbitrary opinion of another.”

-Thomas Hutchinson, “Charge to the Grand Jury,” in Quincy’s Reports, 232, 234 (1767).

The quote is lengthy enough that it needs little commentary.  If only more judges understood this basic reason why they are supposed to follow the law rather than their own ideas of what a wise result might be.  our forefathers certainly understood it.