Disputation XXVIII: On the Judge

This Disputation is entangled with various difficulties; for the ingenuity of men, resourceful in their own defense, has devised various ways by which justice, if it does not favor them, may at least not harm them. The chief interpreter and minister of this is the Judge; of whose judgments the justice and injustice the Angelic Doctor treats, in quaestione 67 and the following. There are also other persons intervening in judgments, as the Accuser, the Defendant, the Witness, and the Advocate, each of whom requires a separate disputation; briefly, however, I shall dispatch myself with these, since not long ago our Father Elizeus ab Oriano wrote most eruditively an entire treatise on this matter ex professo, to whom I refer students of criminal causes and forensic practice as most worthily to be read.