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“A judge's greatest duty is not merely to interpret laws but to ensure justice is delivered without fear or favour. Law must remain a shield for the vulnerable, not a weapon for the powerful. A fair courtroom is the soul of democracy.”

Last update Sept. 26, 2026. History

“I understand Justice Scalia's jurisprudence to begin with a proposition that we should all agree to — namely, that judges should try to interpret the law correctly, and without personal or political bias.”

Sonia Sotomayor (1954) U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Speech in 2000, reported in "Sotomayor's jackpot win, court rulings revealed" at MSNBC (5 June 2009).

“Transparency helps ensure that power is not abused or used to make the powerful, or their immediate families, rich. There is also a genuine public interest in ensuring that the people who make laws and levy tax are following those laws and paying their fair share of tax.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, In the Media

“The Judge does not make the law. It is people that make the law. Therefore if a law is unjust, and if the Judge judges according to the law, that is justice, even if it is not just.”

Alan Paton book Cry, the Beloved Country

Source: Cry, the Beloved Country

“Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing. When they are said to exercise a discretion, it is a mere legal discretion, a discretion to be exercised in discerning the course prescribed by law; and, when that is discerned, it is the duty of the Court to follow it. Judicial power is never exericised for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Judge; always for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the Legislature; or, in other words, to the will of the law.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 22 U.S. (9 Wheaton) 738, 866 (1824)

“The law has armed the High Court of Justice with the power, and imposed on it the duty of preventing brevi manu and by summary proceedings any attempt to interfere with the administration of justice. It is on that ground, and not on any exaggerated notion of the dignity of individuals that insults to Judges are not allowed.”

Charles Bowen (1835–1894) English judge

In re Johnson (1887), L. R. 20 Q. B. D. 74.

“If we succumb to pardoning these men, then we are sabotaging and undermining our own ability to act without fear or favour. We reap what we sow. We will sow a culture of coups for our children. We must therefore, uphold the Rule of Law and Justice.”

Koila Nailatikau (1953) Fijian politician

On her boycott of the "Fiji Week" reconciliation ceremonies, Senate Speech, 22 October 2004 (excerpts) http://www.parliament.gov.fj/hansard/viewhansard.aspx?hansardID266&viewtypefull

“Judges ought to remember, that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Judicature
Essays (1625)

“There is no intrinsic virtue to law and order unless 'law' is equated with justice and 'order' with the discipline of a people satisfied that justice has been done. Law as an instrument of state oppression is a familiar feature of totalitarianism. Without a popularly elected legislature and an independent judiciary to ensure due process, the authorities can enforce as 'law' arbitrary decrees that are in fact flagrant negations of all acceptable norms of justice. There can be no security for citizens in a state where new 'laws' can be made and old ones changed to suit the convenience of the powers that be.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

In Quest of Democracy (1991)
Context: The words 'law and order' have so frequently been misused as an excuse for oppression that the very phrase has become suspect in countries which have known authoritarian rule. [... ] There is no intrinsic virtue to law and order unless 'law' is equated with justice and 'order' with the discipline of a people satisfied that justice has been done. Law as an instrument of state oppression is a familiar feature of totalitarianism. Without a popularly elected legislature and an independent judiciary to ensure due process, the authorities can enforce as 'law' arbitrary decrees that are in fact flagrant negations of all acceptable norms of justice. There can be no security for citizens in a state where new 'laws' can be made and old ones changed to suit the convenience of the powers that be. The iniquity of such practices is traditionally recognized by the precept that existing laws should not be set aside at will.

“For more than six hundred years—that is, since the Magna Carta in 1215—there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge, what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust, oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

An Essay on the Trial by Jury, Boston, MA: John P. Jewett and Company, Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington (1852) p. 5

“A judge's greatest duty is not merely to interpret laws but to ensure justice is delivered without fear or favour. Law must remain a shield for the vulnerable, not a weapon for the powerful. A fair courtroom is the soul of democracy.”

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