date

10 March 1807 Judicial Justice
10 March 1807

Judicial Justice

Letter V

I. Shapes

1. Misdecisions

As decision, so may misdecision, have for its subject either the matter of law or the matter of fact.

The distinction is of cardinal importance: the remedies in the two cases actually applied, wearing such different aspects, and the propriety of them turning on such different principles. Of this afterwards.

Under the imaginary and spurious kind of law which there is such frequent need to mention by the name of jurisprudential law, the distinction between matter of law and matter of fact is a subject of the most perplexing intricacy. This will be discussed in another place.

To obtain a clear idea of the distinction, recourse must be had in the first instance to real, to genuine, to statutory law.

Suppose, for supposition's sake, the rule of action to be, in the whole of it, in the form of statutory law. In this case the question of law is in each instance a question concerning the import of words: a question concerning the import of a determinate word or collection of words, either immediately following one or other, or to be found in different parts of this all-comprehensive code.

In this same case, the question of fact will, on each occasion, be whether in that instance on the individual occasion in question any such state of things had place as is designated by the collection of words so composed: if there be but one proposition that applies to this case in question, i.e. the number of words of which that proposition is composed (a less number of words than those which suffice to constitute a proposition there can not be) whether any such state of things has took place as is indicated by that proposition taken by itself: if there be several such propositions, then whether any such state of things took place, as stands expressed by all those several propositions, taken together.
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