8 March 1807

Judicial Injustice

Letter V

I. Shapes?

1. Misdecision

On the occasion of the arrangements proper to be taken in the view as conducive to the correction and prevention of misdecision, every thing depends on distinction and separation as between matter of law and matter of fact: clear separation in practice, and thence equally clear distinction in conception, the necessary guide to practice.

For this purpose, it is necessary in the first instance to advert to the distinction between statutory and jurisprudential law. Not only is Statutory law the only one of the two under which the separation can be clearly and uniformly and throughout the field of law all comprehensively made, but it is only by obtaining a clear conception of the mode in which it is or may be made under statutory law; that any tolerable conception can be formed of the nature of the task in so far as it is attempted to be carried on under the reign of jurisprudential law.

 In Codification, where this subject as treated in termini.