20th August 1804

Among dicta, a material /an important/ distinction is into direct and collateral. /between directly applicable and collaterally applicable./ Direct a dictum which bears upon the very point in question on which the decision turns. "This very point in question between the parties: collateral commonly called in obiter dictum a proposition, that having two professing to bear upon the point in dispute - upon the principal one (as the phrase of the case in hand /actually before the court/ - that upon some point which may or may not have been the principal point in some prior case: a proposition or rule, which is not pretended to be the rule called for, for the purpose of warranting the decision prayed for on one side depreciated on the other in the case in hand, but which is introduced, as helping to form the ground for that same rule.

In a word, by a collateral dictum I understand a dictum reprinted as being uttered arguendo as the phrase is.

A collateral dictum will accordingly be to a direct dictum a directly - applicable dictum what a decision reprinted as being not in point is to decision reprinted as being in print.

When the dictum is not directly, but only collaterally applicable, there /thereupon/ comes in the question respecting the degree of appositioness or unappositioness: respecting the strength and clearness of the inference as from the dictum cited to the rule requisite to warrant the decision prayed for on one side or the other side.

As /But/ of divergency and eccentricity in physics, so in psychology and jurisprudential law degrees of appositioness, or rather unappositioness are infinite. And a general observation is, that the number of such authorities collected and thereupon into the [...?] to compare the work, is in the inverse ratio of their appositioness. The more there are of those, the more foreign to the purpose.

Note

(a) Jurisprudence, according to Paley, "is a competition of opposite analyses. What comic[?] more just! What satire more severe! Everything that is dear to man left to rule[?], or rather to floral[?], upon a competition of opposite analogies!

And this in the 19th century, is call Environment!

This is the [...?] upon which some men, as will be seen affect to suppose it safer and better for the rule of action to stand throughout, thereupon the bases of statutory law.