Chapter V: On Causes Taking Away the Obligation of Law

217. Two things remain to be discussed: the one of these concerns causes on account of which only the obligation of law ceases or is suspended, while the law remains; the other concerns causes which take away the law itself in perpetuity and for the whole community. In the first case subjection remains, in the second it altogether vanishes.

As regards the causes which take away THE OBLIGATION OF LAW, although in an unequal degree, these are counted especially as five, namely:

1. Ignorance, which takes away the obligation only per accidens, namely by excusing from formal transgression of the law, but by no means from its material transgression.

2. Impotence, whether physical or moral, or fear, which, in a particular case, altogether takes away the obligation; excusing even from material transgression, since the legislator is judged not to have willed, already from the beginning, to extend the obligation to this particular case.

3. Dispensation, which, by a positive act of the legislator, namely by a particular or even general indult, exempts one or several from the obligation of law, but not in a permanent manner.

4. Privilege, which exempts permanently from the obligation either an individual or even a group of persons, and which therefore must be held as a broader or more stable dispensation.

5. Departure from the territory of the legislator, or absence, which cause is called not only excusing, impeding, or exempting, but extracting, because it totally draws the one departing out of the dominion of the law.

Concerning this last cause we have already disputed sufficiently in the preceding chapter, where we treated of travelers (n. 206). It remains, therefore, that we treat of the others in four separate articles.