At the end of the 1980s, as racial profiling was emerging as a contentious political issue, Superior Court Judge Cortland Mathers insisted that a search-on-sight policy the Boston Police Department had instituted to combat gang violence was unconstitutional.

In a series of rulings that drew spirited criticism, and just as vigorous support, he said the policy was in effect “a proclamation of martial law in Roxbury for a narrow class of people, young blacks, suspected of membership in a gang or perceived by the police to be in the company of someone thought to be a member.’’

This would not be the last time he drew considerable public attention for challenging popular conventional wisdom. A few years later, he spoke out just as strongly against mandatory sentencing.

As for the stop-and-frisk policy, “You should not engage in conduct that will cost you the war for the sake of winning the battle,’’ he said in a 1989 interview with the Globe. “When a police officer makes what is in effect an illegal search and seizure, he does constitutional violence.’’

A law-abiding citizen, he added, might think of the constitutional protection against an unreasonable search as an abstract concept. “There’s no reason why he should concern himself with it. He’s never been laid out on the street and frisked. He’s never had his pants dropped to his knees while somebody goes through his underdrawers in some downtown area. Why should he worry about it? But do it to him once. He’ll develop an affection for his constitutional rights the likes of which no one has ever seen.’’

Judge Mathers, who also had been active in Brockton civic affairs, including serving as city solicitor and on the School Committee, died in his Brockton home March 12 of complications from a blood illness. He was 92.

His rulings that the stop-and-frisk policy was unconstitutional drew demands for his resignation, from both the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association and the leader of a community “drop-a-dime’’ antidrugs organization.

The Massachusetts Bar Association, however, called the police union’s demand “irresponsible’’ and said it “treads on dangerous ground.’’

Robert Steadman, then chief justice of the state Superior Court, told the Globe in 1989 that “Judge Mathers followed the law and abided by the Constitution. . . . You may not like his decision, but it was proper. And there’s something more important, and that is the independence of the judiciary. If you undermine that independence, you undermine the entire justice system.’’

Judicial independence was a theme Judge Mathers returned to in 1995 when he spoke out against mandatory sentencing laws that the Legislature had enacted.

In one case, he set aside evidence police had gathered and found a 31-year-old woman – who had been born in Jamaica and was a mother – guilty of drug possession, rather than drug dealing.

Doing so allowed him to sentence her to probation and counseling, instead of to the six-year term she faced on the dealing charge. That mandatory sentence would have been an “absolute miscarriage of justice,’’ he told the Globe.

“I know what the Legislature had in mind when it did this: ‘By God, we have to put a stop to the drug traffickers.’ But it hasn’t worked. Not at all,’’ he said, adding: “A judge either is an automaton, rubberstamping these sentences, or is driven by a sense of justice, to do justice.’’

An only child, Cortland Ainsworth Mathers grew up in the Waban section of Newton, the son of Laurence Mathers and the former Lucille Baldwin.

He graduated from Newton High School and left Bowdoin College in Maine to serve in the Army in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

After the war ended, he returned to Bowdoin, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in English. Initially, he was an insurance claims adjustor before realizing that “the attorneys were making about four times as much as he did,’’ said his son Cortland Jr. of Framingham. “He said, ‘It didn’t take me long to realize that’s what I needed to do.’ ’’

He added that his father “was always interested in justice and loved the intellectual challenge that law represented, and was naturally drawn to it.’’

Judge Mathers graduated in 1952 from Boston University School of Law and was a sole practitioner until forming the firm Mone & Mathers with William K. Mone. In the mid-1980s, Governor Michael S. Dukakis appointed him to the Superior Court bench.

“He was intellectual and cultured, but also had — for lack of a better term — a working-class streak in him,’’ Cortland Jr. said. “He had a breadth of interests that allowed him to share something in common with just about everyone.’’

Chuck Mathers of Easton, a District Court associate justice, said his father “was a curious person. He was curious about the internal combustion engine, the aerodynamics of an airplane wing, the habits of a bonefish. He was the same way when we were discussing issues at work. No matter what he was involved in, he was intellectually curious.’’

When Judge Mathers became interested in flying planes, for example, he restored a 1946 single-engine plane and completed the project on his front lawn. “One lady asked if I landed there,’’ he told the Globe in 1989.

In 1949, he married Carolyn Mary Campbell, to whom he had been introduced through mutual friends, and they had six children.

“My father had an uncanny ability to shine the sunlight on each of his children in a very particular way, so we’ve all grown up in an incredibly healthy way and are incredibly close and incredibly different,’’ said his son Craig of Boston.

A service has been held for Judge Mathers, who in addition to his wife and his sons Cortland Jr., Craig, and Chuck, leaves another son, Christopher, of Brockton; two daughters, Christina of Brookline and Carrie Mathers-Kurland of Barrington, R.I.; 11 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

As a colleague, “He’d seen everything once. If you came up with a problem, he’d seen it and solved it at least once in his career, and was happy to lend advice,’’ said James McHugh, a longtime friend who formerly was a justice for the state Superior Court and Massachusetts Appeals Court. “At the same time, he was enormously funny, he was enormously original. He thought about things in life from a very idiosyncratic perspective and he made you laugh out loud.’’

Judge Mathers was passionate and positive about everything, from practicing law to his pastime of fishing, where “the one he caught that morning was always the best and the biggest,’’ McHugh said. When dining at a restaurant, “the meal he ate was just about the best thing he’d ever put in his mouth, even though he’d had the same meal the week before. His enthusiasm and joy was infectious.’’

After Judge Mathers died, another one of their regular dining companions drew a life lesson from his insistence that each dinner include “a Beefeater martini filled to within 2 millimeters of the top,’’ McHugh said. “That was really a metaphor for his life. He insisted that his life be filled to the very brim, and he approached life in a way to make that so.’’

Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard @globe.com.