Chapter III — The various acceptations of right: the notions and divisions of justice

I. There are three acceptations of right. First, for the law defining what is to be attributed to each man out of justice: in which acceptation the law itself is called right, or the rule of right. Second, right signifies a power of doing, exacting, or receiving something. Third, right is taken for the equality between thing and thing. One right is in the thing, which gives an action both against the thing and against the person. By this right men possess the things which they hold, and are able to sell, alienate, let them out, and so forth. Another is a right to the thing, which gives an action against the person, not against the thing — that is, it gives a personal, not a real action. You sell your thing to another, which by the delivery of it becomes his. The buyer has a right in this thing bought; you retain a right to the thing, that is, you have an action against the person for exacting the price.

II. That potestative right is of two kinds: one of jurisdiction, which princes, prelates, and superiors possess over their own subjects; another of ownership, by which a man possesses his own thing. The remote matter of justice is things — money, wares, fields, houses, animals, and the like. The proximate matter is exterior human actions.

III. QUESTION I. What is justice, and of how many kinds is it? ANSWER. It is the perpetual and constant will of rendering to each his right. It is threefold: commutative, distributive, and legal. Commutative justice is between two equal men buying, selling, letting, and so forth. For in these contracts they are equals, even though on other grounds the one were a prince and the other a subject. Distributive justice is of the whole toward the parts, namely of the prince toward his subjects in distributing ranks, dignities, rewards, and the like. Legal justice is of the part toward the whole, that is, of subjects toward the prince, inasmuch as all render those things which are fitting to the community by the prescript of the laws. That this legal justice is not justice in the whole rigour of the term the Salmanticenses and others contend; but the opposite opinion is to me the more probable.

IV. Distributive justice distributes the goods of the community among the parts of the same community according to the proportion of merits. This virtue of justice resides in the superior, whose office it is to distribute the common goods; it is found also in subjects, inasmuch as they acquiesce in this justice. The mean of the thing which this justice regards is not one of arithmetical equality, but of geometrical proportion: which proportion holds between the goods to be distributed and the merits of the subjects.

V. QUESTION II. Whether commutative justice is distinguished from vindicative justice? ANSWER. Commutative justice, as has been said, renders to each his own thing according to the right which he has of exacting it; for it establishes an equality between debt and credit, which arises out of buyings, sellings, loans, and the remaining contracts; likewise out of thefts, homicides, and other injuries, whose damage is to be compensated. The principal act of commutative justice is restitution.

VI. Vindicative justice can be regarded either in the judge or prince, or in the private persons injured, who demand vengeance. Under the former consideration it is an act of true commutative justice; but in the persons injured it is not true justice, but a potential part of the same, as St. Thomas teaches, II-II, q. 80, art. 1, reply 1. The reason of the first part is evident. For the judge is bound by force of commutative justice not only to provide for the common good, but also to defend his subjects from injuries and oppressions. There is present besides a mean of the thing. For the judge is bound to inflict a penalty equalling the right of the offended person that has been injured. The second part is plain of itself.

VII. QUESTION III. Is commutative justice distinguished in species from distributive justice? ANSWER. The common opinion affirms it. Since indeed the specific diversity of virtues is taken from the formal diversity of objects. But each of these virtues regards a formally diverse object. Therefore a specific diversity resides between them. For the object of the virtue of justice is a right and an equality to be constituted between the right of one and the debt of another. Commutative justice regards arithmetical equality, distributive geometrical. The right of commutative justice is a rigorous right; the right of distributive justice is imperfect, founded not in the thing or to the thing, as the former, but in fitness and personal capacity. The first justice regards the price of the thing; the other the prerogatives of the person, as St. Thomas teaches, II-II, q. 61, art. 1.

VIII. It is to be observed nevertheless that distributive justice almost always has commutative justice inseparable from it. On which matter read Vol. VII, book 2, dissertation 1, chapter 4, no. 10.

IX. QUESTION IV. What are the vices opposed to justice? ANSWER. Justice is here taken, not for sanctifying grace, by which a man is called just, nor for the general justice set in the complex of all the virtues; but for that peculiar moral virtue which inclines the will to render to each what is his, as we have already said. Now the other virtues are wont to have two contrary vices: the one by excess, the other by defect. To justice there is opposed defect only, inasmuch as a man does not render what he owes. Excess in rendering more than is owed conflicts with the other virtues, but not with justice, unless harm be inflicted upon another.

X. The vice opposed to justice is injustice, which, like justice, is divided into various species. For one is legal injustice, which relaxes the laws; another is opposed to distributive justice, namely respect of persons; and to commutative justice are opposed thefts, homicides, rapines, contumelies, calumnies, false accusations, the impostures of advocates, the unjust judgments of judges, and the like. Injustice is in its own kind a mortal sin; from smallness of matter, or by reason of indeliberation, it is a venial fault.