date

8 March 1807 Judicial Justice
8 March 1807

Judicial Justice

Letter V

I. Shapes?

1. Misdecision

1. Let the rule of action - the standard of rectitude be conceived to exist, throughout its whole extent, in the state of Statutory law. Being, throughout its whole extent, expressed by a determinate assemblage of words, the whole matter of law is now included in that mass of words: no question of law can be started, that does not turn upon the intention of the legislator, as deducible from some one or more articles in that collection of words.

Of these words some will be words in general use, words in every mouth, and the import of which may and must thence be presumed to be in every head, and words in particular or special use. These words may be called technical or scientific terms; terms the use, or at least the constant use of which is confined to persons occupied in the exercise or study of some particular profession, art or science. These scientific terms will be either non-jurisprudential or jurisprudential. In regard to non-jurisprudential terms, the import of them ( scientific list, to match with a useful distinction in regard to evidence - scientific evidence, unless in so far as it may have been thought fit to consign an explanation of them to the statute book itself) will upon every occasion be to be sought from the testimony of persons conversant in the particular course of action - profession or other profit-seeking occupation - art or science: these will form no part of the matter of law.
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  • Title: [9 March 1807 Letter V I. Shapes]
    Description: 9 March 1807

    Letter V

    I. Shapes

    1. Misdecision

    3. Other examples are all denominations of contracts or[?] all denominations of offences: other terms of still more extensive import such as thing, to cause, to contribute as applied in another place +, for example, to delinquency, and co-delinquency, in the case of a result produced by punishable transgression.

    4. So again a very short but most significant groupe of words which though terms of jurisprudence are at the same time among the words in most common use: obligation, right, power, liberty, privilege, exemption. These, as shewn in another place §, though, as not being any of them a species of any thing, they are not any of them susceptible of definition, in the sense commonly annexed to that term, are not the less susceptible of exposition, nor do they the less stand in need of it.

    10. That though the operation indicated by the word legislation may not improperly be spoken of as being the subject of a particular art and science: yet the product of that operation, viz: law - a book of real law when once composed neither ought to be nor need be of such a nature as to require art or science for the comprehension of it: for that when framed as it might be and ought to be, on the part of each individual the means of his understanding in so far as, his mental faculties, natural and acquired, afford him the capacity of understanding it, will not be to be sought for any where out of itself.

     Go on with jurisprudential law.

    / + [...?] I.917/

    / § Fragment on Government pp.│ │/

     Go in with jurisprudential law.
  • Title: [8 March 1807 Judicial Justice]
    Description: 8 March 1807

    Judicial Justice

    Letter V

    I. Shapes

    1. Misdecision

    In regard to the jurisprudential division of scientific language, the proper and only proper and necessary source of interpretation in which their import can be to be looked for, is the code, the all-comprehensive body of statute law itself. In this receptacle if any where they must find their interpretation. But their interpretation, in what will it consist? - In the giving on the occasion of each such scientific word, or scientific combination of words, by the supposition not in general use, its equivalent in a portion of discourse composed altogether of such words as are in general use.

    That this is feasible, may be averred with confidence. In regard to each such word, if a man comprehends the meaning of it, the proof and test of his so doing is his being able to express the meaning of it in a portion of discourse composed altogether of words in general use. Take any such scientific word for example; and with it a man of law conversant in the degree in which lawyers general are, with the words that compose the appropriate language of the law. Is the word unintelligible to him? it might not to be any where in use, among any set of men: it is not a bond of social intercourse, but a snare. Is it intelligible to him? he is then able to express the import of it in other words - in words in general use.
  • Title: [8 March 1807 Judicial Justice]
    Description: 8 March 1807

    Judicial Justice

    Letter V

    I. Shapes?

    I. Misdecision

    These jurisprudential scientific words and phrases, are they of no use? the employment made of them, is it to be numbered among the abuses and grievances with which the field of law is at present loaded and defiled? By no means. There are many of them that are of indispensable use. They perform each of them, on each occasion in which it comes to be repeated, the function of perhaps several whole lines of words: viz: the collection of words necessary for translating the import of them respectively into words in general use.

    By these adbridged forms of expression, discourses are held with ease, such as otherwise if held at all, could not be held without extreme difficulty. Grammarians understand, all who have occasion to write or speak occasionally feel - the difficulty and embarrassment that attends the use of a compound nominative or accusative, still more that of a compound genitive case: a word composed of a whole line of words, of which to convey the import clearly the last ought to have the sign of the genitive case, - the 's - annext to it: which sign on account of the awkwardness of the location is now commonly left out, the awkwardness in some measure masked, but at the expence of clearness. In jurisprudence this difficulty would be continually recurring and with indefinitely increased force, were it not for the use of these necessary abbreviations - this intellectual short-hand.

    The algebraist when he finds himself oppressed by the endless symbolical line of letters by which his composite quantity stands expressed, substitutes a single letter to the whole series, and thus finds himself at his ease. What would be his embarrassment, if precluded from the use of so necessary a resource?