A healthy democracy requires the preponderance of differing views, and those differences often lead to disputes that are resolved by the judiciary. In the service of resolving such disputes, the work of an appellate justice can be simply described as reading the law and applying it to the facts of a given case. You can imagine providing this explanation to a curious non-attorney at a social gathering and receiving the response: "Well how hard can that be? You just follow whatever the law says."