It is widely noted in law schools that an older, experienced judge was once talking with a younger judge who had just been sworn in. The older judge asked the younger judge if he knew what his job was in making decisions; and the younger judge said, "Yes, I should make decisions which are just and fair." And the older judge said, "No, you are to enforce the law."

This is the same response Oliver Wendell Holmes gave when his friend, Learned Hand, too casually ended a conversation saying "go and do justice." Holmes, like Roberts, said that as lofty as that sentiment may be, it was not his job since thinking otherwise fails to preserve the important distinction upon which the rule of law itself is based.

People disagree about what is just and fair. We live in red states and blue ones. So if we are to remain anything resembling a "more perfect union" in any practical sense, we must remain faithful to the ideal of being a nation of laws and not men. Of course, we the people must seek justice in legislative enactment and personal behavior. But in matters of judging, the aspiration is more modest; in John Roberts' words, more humble. The judicial oath requires a judge to enforce our choices, subject only to avoiding a transgression of the bill of rights. As countless decisions illustrate — from flag-burning as speech that insults patriotic citizen to the exclusionary rule that lets the criminal go free when the constable blunders — judges must enforce the law, even the ones they dislike or with which they disagree.

"Justice?" Asked writer William Gaddis in his novel of the 1990s, "You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law."