29 June 1805

Evidence

Introd.

Ch. Jurisprudent

''. 3. Sources & decisions

 To be rewritten

''. 3. Sources of Jurisprudential Law.

Jurisprudential law being a non-entity, jurisprudence considered as an art, the art of drawing conjectures, the next thing /objects of inquiry/ to be done is to obscure the sources or materials of conjecture /what there is of reality in the business consists of the sources or materials of conjecture/: the sources from whence the conjectures are to be drawn: the masses of materials out of which the factitious and fictitous laws are to be deduced contracted & deduced.

These sources may be thus enumerated.

1. Judicial decisions: decisions pronounced, opinions given, orders issued by Judges on the occasion of particular suits or causes.

2. Judicial dicta: rules laid down by Judges on the occasion of the decisions pronounced in particular causes.

3. Formularies or memorandums of the practice or procedure of Judges, or carried on under the eyes of Judges, in particular cause, in relation to points contested or uncontested.

4. Articles or passages in Law Treatises, in the form of maxims or otherwise.

5. Opinions extrajudicial of men of law.

6. Supposed dictates of original utility of all these in their order.

Judges putting sources[?] of their own upon the words property and possession in solemn trusting.