By Chief Justice P. Scott Neville, Jr.
“Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins.”
--John Locke, The Two Treatises of Government (1689)
On a cold night in January 1838, people in Springfield, Illinois, were preoccupied with events 90 miles away in Alton, Illinois.
A few months earlier, a mob killed abolitionist clergyman and publisher Elijah Lovejoy and destroyed his printing press because he had railed against the lynching and burning of a Black man across the river in St. Louis.
Since the nation’s beginning, the courts have stood as an equal and independent branch of government, charged with enforcing the law even when it is unpopular. Lovejoy’s murder exposed the fragility of legal authority.
A young and mostly unknown Abraham Lincoln spoke before a gathering at Springfield’s Young Men’s Lyceum about the impact of lawlessness.
Lincoln was most troubled by the public’s reaction to the violence. Some people approved; others did not care. Lincoln warned that when mobs replace legal safeguards, more than lives are at stake. Such lawlessness weakens trust in the law.
Lincoln knew that courts do not rely on force or popularity, but on following established process and principles. When a community faces fear, anger, or division, courts are often called on to keep disagreements lawful and prevent the resolution of disputes by other means.
In periods of stability, this role may seem unremarkable. During periods of strain, however, it becomes crucial.
Lincoln believed this danger posed a bigger threat to the republic than any foreign enemy. He argued that if a nation loses trust in the legal process, it risks falling apart from within as leaders arise who use fear, disorder, and resentment to gain power. In his view, lawlessness disrupts public order and creates conditions for tyranny.
Lincoln encouraged his audience to see respect for the law as a shared civic duty. “Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense,” he explained.
Lincoln called for a “reverence for the laws” to be the America’s “political religion.” He did not intend blind obedience, but rather a principled commitment to settling disagreements through legal channels, even when the results are unpopular or disappointing.
Lincoln acknowledged that accepting decisions one disagrees with is hard. Nonetheless, he understood that letting force or passion replace law would have much worse consequences.
The lesson Lincoln offered retains its importance today. We must always value the rule of law, especially when emotions are strong and breaking the rules seems tempting.
The Role of the Rule of Law
Courts cannot remove conflict or anger from public life, and that has never been our role. Instead, our role is to provide a pathway for disagreements to be resolved peacefully. For this reason, courts need to do a better job of making the legal process accessible and intelligible for everyone, not just those within the legal profession.
Although judges and lawyers have a role in this framework, its power ultimately relies on the public’s trust that legal institutions will act fairly, consistently, and independently.
World history does not guarantee that the rule of law will survive on its own. It lasts only as long as communities demand it. Our founders recognized this. And Lincoln recognized this in 1838.
The challenge Lincoln described returns whenever fear or frustration leads individuals to view the legal system as an obstacle rather than a protection.
I believe the Judicial Branch should do more to inform and educate litigants and the public about the rule of law, the court’s work, and its purpose. This means clarifying legal procedures, removing barriers to justice, and supporting the courts with fair funding and responsible stewardship.
Our democracy endures as long as the rule of law remains understood, trusted, and shared. In the words of James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, “Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge.”
In the coming months, I will describe in this space how Supreme Court committees, commissions, and task forces are advancing these objectives and what they mean for the public and the courts.
These efforts reflect the Illinois Supreme Court’s constitutional responsibility to maintain a rule of law worthy of the public’s trust, now and for the future.