It was John Adams who taught that the goal of a free government is to establish “a government of laws, and not of men.”
That ideal — law above personal will — lies at the heart of our Constitution. And it is precisely that principle now being tested in Utah.
A judiciary ascendant
Late last night, Utah Judge Dianna Gibson issued a sweeping decision rejecting the Legislature’s congressional redistricting plan and ordering the adoption of a map drawn by the plaintiffs for the 2026 elections. In doing so, she moved the judiciary from its proper role of review to an untoward position of rule.
Article IX of Utah’s Constitution could not be more explicit: “The Legislature shall divide the state into congressional, legislative, and other districts accordingly.”
Proposition 4, the 2018 ballot initiative known as Better Boundaries, did not and could not alter that. Even the official Voter Guide made clear that the proposition in question “does not amend the Utah Constitution” and that the commission it created could only recommend, not dictate.
Yet the court’s ruling has turned that advisory process into a binding one. By assuming the power to choose a map, the judge has displaced both the elected Legislature and, by extension, the people themselves.
When judges become lawmakers
The judiciary’s proper role is to interpret law, not to create or administer it. When Chief Justice John Marshall announced the power of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison, he also set its limit: “Questions, in their nature political, can never be made in this court.”
The U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed that line in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), holding that partisan-gerrymandering disputes are “political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.”
The Utah Supreme Court first unearthed its novel theory in its League of Women Voters decision, apparently discovering a heretofore “dormant” alter-or-reform clause, a provision added in 1900 within the amendment allowing initiatives.
For 125 years, that clause slumbered quietly in our Constitution, until the court reimagined it as a new source of legislative constraint.
In its 2023 League of Women Voters v. Utah State Legislature decision, the court performed what can only be described as textual “pretzelization.” (If the court can create new categories of law, we can coin new words.)
The justices claimed that the Legislature’s repeal of Proposition 4 was an unconstitutional infringement on the people’s fundamental right to govern themselves. They reached that conclusion by conflating two entirely distinct provisions of the Utah Constitution:
1. The Initiative Provision (Art. VI, Sec. 1), which makes the people’s lawmaking power coequal to the Legislature’s; and
2. The Alter-or-Reform Clause (Art. I, Sec. 2), a philosophical statement protecting the people’s “inherent right to institute, reform, alter, or abolish their government.”
In its conflation, the court in fact declared that when the people take the initiative to enact a “government reform,” such as Proposition 4, that initiative is instantly elevated into a constitutionally protected right under the Alter-or-Reform Clause.
This is a concept created ex nihilo by the court; it existed nowhere before.
It was, in short, judicial sleight-of-hand. A narrow citizen petition was transformed into a constitutional mandate, contradicting the court’s own precedent in Carter v. Lehi City (2012), which held that the initiative power “reaches to the full extent of the legislative power, but no further.”
In other words, an initiative is a statute, no more, no less, and subject to amendment like any other bill. That principle has now been shredded, substituting passion for principle, will for reason, and robes for restraint.
The rule of law and the consent of the governed
An independent judiciary is indispensable to liberty, but independence is not supremacy.
When unelected judges usurp the functions of lawmakers, checks and balances collapse. The separation of powers is no mere technicality; it is the essential architecture of republican government.
Utahns of every political persuasion should resist the temptation to cheer a ruling simply because it aligns with their short-term preferences. For if courts can redraw maps today, they can just as easily redraw laws tomorrow. The same power that pleases one side in the moment will surely punish it in the next.
The danger is not merely institutional; it is moral. When judges pursue their own priorities and desires, they cease to be guardians of law and become instruments of will. That is the very condition Adams warned against: a government not of laws, but of men.
A call for judicial humility
Utah’s Constitution firmly places redistricting in the hands of the people’s representatives, who answer to the voters every election. Judges, though independent, are unelected and unaccountable to voters. For the rule of law to endure, each branch must know its limits and honor them. Judicial restraint, not judicial imperialism, preserves liberty.
The issue before us is larger than redistricting. It is about who governs in a republic: the people through their elected representatives, or judges through decree? Utah must choose the former, or we will find ourselves living under the latter.
For the sake of our constitutional order and the consent of the governed, it is time to restore that balance.