William C. Duncan: 'Abandoning the court’s constitutionally prescribed role of faithfully applying the law so that it can better reflect popular opinion is a risky and potentially dark road for Americans’ civil liberties.'
| Oct. 7, 2022, 11:51 a.m.became the only Utahn to ever serve as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Serving 16 years, Sutherland was on the court when it faced a significant test of its independence. Then, as today, its legitimacy was publicly called into question. The lessons of Sutherland’s experience still apply today.
the composition of the court by adding six new justices for any of the currently-serving justices older than 70. The plan ultimately failed.Americans’ confidence in the court at a “historic low.” The problem is that the court is not an elected representative branch of government that is designed to pursue popular opinion. Its constitutional role is to apply existing laws made by the people themselves or their representatives to ensure that the law is well understood and consistently applied.that justices “take an oath to be objective, to be neutral, and we have to show our math when we make our decisions.
This is because in some cases, the court must act to invalidate laws that may be popular because they are inconsistent with our most basic values as expressed in the Constitution. Before joining the court, Sutherland described this: “‘The great purpose of the Constitution is to ... preserve the rights of the citizen by the definite and unchanging law of the land, instead of leaving him at the mercy of the transitory opinions of a constantly changing majority.
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