March 1808

Letter V

§.6. Ends of Justice

Causes (immediate) of

failure of justice

Note

Causes (immediate causes) of failure of justice, or rather, of non-fulfilment of the ordinances of the substantive branch of law in relation to this or that portion of the field of law.

If misdecision be understood as one of the causes by which failure of justice may have been produced, then the term failure of justice may be considered as covering in its whole extent the case here meant to be designated.

If the expression failure of justice be considered as confined to the cases where no decision has been pronounced, and thus as not comprehending the cases in which the prejudice done to the plaintiff's side of the suit has misdecision for its cause, then no such comparatively short appellative as that of failure of justice can here be employed; but the longer and more composite appellation must be employed; but the longer and more composite appellation must be employed instead of it.

So great is the embarrassment attendant on the necessity of employing a sentence instead of a word, and so great the convenience of employing appellations in familiar use in preference to new ones, that after the notice thus given the well-known term failure of justice will be employed in that more extensive sense in which misdecision is composed in the number of the causes by which it is liable to be produced.