boni et aequi"—it is better to leave these words untranslated, such is the wealth of significance and connotation which they have acquired. "Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas jus suum cuique tribuendi. Juris praecepta sunt haec: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere. Jurisprudentia est divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, justi atque injusti scientia."
The first pregnant phrase is from the older jurist Celsus; the longer passage is by the later Ulpian, and may be taken as an expansion of the first. Both the one and the other expressed the most advanced and philosophic ethics of the ancient world. They are both in the first chapter of the Digest, wherein they become enactments. An extract from Paulus follows: "Jus has different meanings; that which is always aequum ac bonum is called jus, to wit, the jus naturale: jus also means the jus civile, that which is expedient (utile) for all or most in any state. And in our state we have also the praetorian jus" This passage indicates the course of the development of the Roman law: the fundamental and ceaselessly growing core of specifically Roman law, the jus civile; its continual equitable application and enlargement, which was the praetor's contribution; and the constant application of the aequum ac bonum, observed perhaps in legal rules common to many peoples, but more surely existing in the high reasoning of jurists instructed in the best ethics and philosophy of the ancient world, and learned and practised in the law.
Now notice some of the still general, but distinctly legal, rather than ethical, rules collected in the Digest: The laws cannot provide specifically for every case that may arise; but when their intent is plain, he who is adjudicating a cause should proceed ad similia, and thus declare the law in the case.[1] Here is stated the general and important formative principle, that new cases should be decided consistently and eleganter, which means logically and in accordance with established rules. Yet legal solecisms will exist, perhaps in a statute or in some rule of law evoked by a special exigency. Their application
- ↑ Dig. i. 3, 10, and 12.
