The judge's "office"

Our discussion of the role of a Supreme Court Justice might profitably consider two principles proposed by Catholic sources.  First, there is the idea from St. Thomas that no one has an office ("officium") directly from the natural law; offices, relevantly, are the creation of an authoritative political regime.  Second, however, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (2004) says this (par. 409; ital. in original):  "In their specific areas (drafting laws, governing, setting up systems of checks and balances), elected officials must strive to seek and attain that which will contribute to making civil life proceed well in its overall course.  [citation to par. 2236 CCC]  Those who govern have the obligation to answer to those governed, but this does not in the least imply that representatives are merely passive agents of the electors.  The control exercised by the citizens does not in fact exclude the freedom that elected officials must enjoy in order to fulfil their mandate with respect to the objectives to be pursued."

Justices of the Supreme Court are not, of course, "elected officials," nor are they, in any straigthforward sense, "representatives."  But they are among "those who govern," and I wouldn't want to say that there is a Platonic Form of what their governing "office" is.  That office is better approached, I think, in these terms provided by Paul Bator: "The judicial power is neither a platonic essence nor a pre-existing empirical classification.  It is a purposive institutional concept, whose content is a product of history and custom distilled in the light of experience and expediency."  There is much more to be said, I think, about how we discern the criteria for "developing" the judicial office.  But I think that among them is, in those words of the Compendium, the freedom "to fulfil their mandate with respect to the objectives to be pursued.  These do not depend exclusively on special interests, but in a much greater part on the function of synthesis and mediation that serve the common good . . . . "