Procedure

5 July 1804

Ch. Non-homologation

''.3 Import uncertain

''.3-2. Import uncertain

2. In the next place, from the indeterminateness of the words of which any given mass of the matter of jurisprudential law is composed, follows by necessary consequence the uncertainty of the import. Compare it in this respect with its [...?] and rival. Obscurity, ambiguity, and delusiveness are imperfections to which law in the form of statutory law is but too liable: for statutory law is but a species of human discourse, applying itself to that particular subject, and the above are imperfections to which all human discourse is liable. But in statutory law these are but individual and casual imperfections, imperfections capable of being lessened, and actually lessening every day, as the human mind advances in practice, and in that strength which is increased in practice. In /To/ jurisprudential law on the other hand they are essential, and (as will be seen more particularly under another head) incurable: the portion of them which results from our ill-adopted choice words bearing in proportion to that which arises from the absolute want of determinate words. The words of which the matte of jurisprudential is composed, those words indeterminate as they are, are still words: and to the several imperfections above-mentioned these words whatever they are, are still in no less a degree, but as will be seen in the much greater degree liable, than those determinate words of which the statutory law is composed. To all the imperfections, and those curable ones to which statutory law is exposed, all which it is loaded with and in a much higher degree jurisprudential law add its own essential, peculiar, and incurable ones.