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On Tuesday, Hon. Nels S.D. Peterson was sworn in as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia. He is the 35th Chief Justice of the state’s high court and was sworn in by his predecessor, Michael P. Boggs.

During his swearing-in speech, Chief Justice Peterson gave a passionate defense of the rule of law and the limited but vital role of the judiciary:

The rule of law means that no person is above the law’s requirements or below its protections.

I would also add two other elements. First, the law must be public and made by proper authorities, and second, cases should be decided by an independent judiciary, not by officials under the control of others.

And I should add a word on what the rule of law is not. It is not rule by judges. The law’s constraints fall most strongly on judges, and when we push against those constraints, when we stray out of our limited scope of deciding cases before us, according to the law that other people made, we ourselves undermine the rule of law.

This state capitol is a building where policymaking, and sometimes even politics, happens, especially during this final week of the General Assembly’s 2025 session. Policymaking and politics are often team sports. But judges don’t play for a team. We wear robes, not jerseys.

The rule of law depends on judges being independent. And judicial independence that advances rather than undermines the rule of law is possible only when judges understand and respect the limits of the role.

United States Chief Justice Marshall famously described the role of the courts as saying what the law is. When the law is written, as most law is in this country, a proper respect for the limits of the judicial role means that we say what the law is according to the text of that law and according to the public meaning that text had at the time that it was adopted.

Watch Chief Justice Peterson’s full speech here, beginning around the 30-minute mark.