Like so many others, the relationship between law and justice is complicated and confusing. Although we tend to think of courts as being involved in the administration of justice, the role and responsibilities of judges are far from straightforward in fulfilling that task. Indeed, legal commentators diverge considerably in their opinions about the extent to which justice and law can march along different paths and with different destinations. In negotiating this central, if troubling, terrain, judges reveal much about the law and themselves.

For some, the role of the judge is simply to apply the law as it is; this in itself will result in justice being done. The fact that this may lead to a certain injustice in particular and discrete cases is considered to be the price to be paid for a legal process that recommends certainty and predictability as overarching virtues. Subscribing to the conventional wisdom of Baron Rolfe's adage that “hard cases are apt to introduce bad law,” such proponents maintain that bending the law to meet difficult or obscure facts is ultimately more trouble than it is worth. Others, of course, take a different tack. They insist that the primary duty of judges is to do justice and that the maintenance of legal clarity is not weighty enough to defeat the delivery of justice in individual cases. The law will lose respect and place even greater distance between itself and people if it fails to deliver justice.