OF JUSTICE AND LAW

Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives to every
man his due. 1 Jurisprudence is the knowledge of things divine
and human, the science of the just and the unjust.

2 Having laid down these general definitions, and our object
being the exposition of the law of the Roman people, we think
that the most advantageous plan will be to commence with an
easy and simple path, and then to proceed to details with a most
careful and scrupulous exactness of interpretation. Otherwise, if
we begin by burdening the student's memory, as yet weak and
untrained, with a multitude and variety of matters, one of two
things will happen: either we shall cause him wholly to desert the
study of law, or else we shall bring him at last, after great labour,
and often, too, distrustful of his own powers (the commonest
cause, among the young, of ill-success), to a point which he
might have reached earlier, without such labour and confident
in himself, had he been led along a smoother path.

3 The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure
no one, and to give every man his due. 4 The study of law
consists of two branches, law public, and law private. The
former relates to the welfare of the Roman State; the latter to
the advantage of the individual citizen. Of private law then we
may say that it is of threefold origin, being collected from the
precepts of nature, from those of the law of nations, or from
those of the civil law of Rome.

TITLE II