The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Hawaii has given his State of the Judiciary address, available here. Here’s an excerpt:
Legislators, as you well know, enact laws in accordance with what they understand to be the popular will and in the public interest. Judges, however, apply the law that is the result of longstanding common law traditions and legislative processes to the evidence in individual cases; judges do so even when the loudest voices at the time may have other conceptions about what the law or result should be in a particular case. In short, a judge’s first and foremost duty is to fairly and impartially apply the constitution and the law to the facts of the case. A judge’s personal feelings about what the law “should be” has no place in his or her deliberations.