ABSTRACT

The relation of legal justice to democracy is one of the significant problems of popular government. Nevertheless, it is notable there have been sharp conflicts on fundamental questions of justice at various times between the courts and the greatest leaders of the democracy — Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. The function of the judge is at best a difficult one, seeking amid complicated social, political, economic, ethical and cultural facts a principle of justice which will be recognized by his profession and by the community. To fuse the past and the present in a juristic rule of action useful for the future is a work of the very greatest gravity — one of the highest triumphs of human intelligence in the field of social relations. On the whole, the Judiciary, like the Legislative branch of the government, tended to lose in relation to the Executive as the interpreter of democratic consciousness.