8 March 1807

Judicial Justice

Letter V

I. Shapes

1. Misdecision

The rule of action being in the state of statutory law, the question of law is therefore uniformly a question concerning the import of a certain word or assemblage of words. But whose then are these the words? Of whom, but of the legislator? If, among those whose duty and business it is to assign an import to any such assemblage of words, there be a doubt which of two imports is the true one, to what Oracle should recurrence be made, but to the legislator? If it be a law of his own making, is there any other person so well able to understand, so competent to declare what his meaning was or is, as he? If it be among the laws received by him in the way of adoption from his predecessors, if he understands[?] not better than any one else, what on the occasion in question was their will, what he can not but understand is a matter still more directly material - viz: what at the time in question is his own will: that will which in truth at each given moment of time is the only immediate rule of action and standard of rectitude.

 Go on to explain what constitutes the matter of law under jurisprudential law, in analogy to the above.