Question IV: Concerning Public Officials

I. Who public officials are. - Under the name of officials here come all those who are constituted in a public function or office, such as judges, advocates, notaries, guardians of public order, etc.; who, if they do not discharge their office well, harm the common good and can inflict unjust damage upon private persons. Hence certain things concerning them must be noted.¹

¹ Cf. St. Alphonsus, Praxis conf., nn. 55-56; Aertnijs, Th. P., nn. 44-45; Lehmkuhl in the new edition of Reuter, Neo-conf., n. 167a; Salsmans, Rechtelijke Plichtenleer, that is, juridical deontology.

II. Judges are to be questioned, if they seem of laxer conscience:

1. Whether they have not shown acceptance of persons.

2. Whether they have expedited cases.

3. Whether before sentence they have premised or omitted suitable study.

4. Whether they have not pronounced sentence from passion: hatred, aversion, affection toward one party.

5. Whether they have not decreed penalties graver than is just, by not attending to attenuating circumstances, if any were present.

6. Whether for rendering sentence, whether just or unjust, they have exacted or accepted money or gifts.²

² Several other things can be seen in Summa Theologiae Moralis, II, nn. 632-634.

Let it be noted: a) Judges, if they lack competent knowledge, are bound to leave the office, or to learn juridical knowledge and meanwhile, as far as they can, to abstain from exercising the function, or at least to take counsel from a doctor if they cannot abstain altogether.

b) Jurors, who among certain nations are constituted to judge concerning the guilt of crimes according to the persuasion of their own conscience, sin if they pronounce against the accused either from private knowledge alone, when the crime has not been judicially proven, or from judicial proof while by private knowledge they know that he is innocent.

III. Advocates sin especially:

1. Those who undertake to defend civil causes openly unjust, or, after they have known them to be unjust, continue to defend them: but if they have been victorious in the cause, they are bound to the defeated party as to damage; if they have been defeated, they can be bound as to the expenses of the client, if he was ignorant of the injustice and pursued the cause from ignorance.

2. If they do not faithfully teach their clients the conditions of the cause.

3. If they do not preserve fidelity and secrecy for their clients.

4. If in defending a just cause they commit negligence, or employ bad arts.

5. If by their negligence they are at fault that clients have fallen from the cause, when otherwise, all things being duly and aptly brought forward, they would have prevailed.

6. If they demand a salary too exaggerated.

In all these things, if the advocate has inflicted unjust damage, he is bound to repair it.

IV. Notaries and public scribes are suitably to be questioned:

1. Whether through negligence they have been the cause of grave damage.

2. Whether they have committed infidelity or injustice in noting depositions of witnesses or in drawing up instruments.

3. Whether they have violated secrecy.

V. Ministers and guardians of public order are to be questioned according to opportunity:

1. Whether they have watched over public morality.

2. Whether they have not abused their office for sinning.

3. Whether, while inspecting brothels, they have had depraved desires.

4. Whether they have reported delinquents within the determined time.

5. Whether they have not accepted gifts in order not to report.

6. Whether they have not reported innocent persons from hatred or vengeance.

7. Whether they have denounced someone for a merely casual damaging.

VI. Observation. - Public officials of whatever kind are bound by office, and therefore from justice:

1. to employ ordinary diligence and diligence proportioned to the gravity of matters in fulfilling their function;

2. to act conformably to those things which are explicitly stated in their contract or special statute;

3. not to abuse their office or knowledge acquired by force of their office, in favor of blood relatives or friends, for example by revealing a matter to them sooner than to other citizens, or, on the contrary, by deliberately delaying a public manifestation which ought to be made. But merely to use such knowledge for one's own advantage is held by many as not unjust: this indeed we do not wish to approve, but neither do we dare condemn it, unless nevertheless it were positively prohibited by law.

Therefore officials must especially attend to these things; likewise their confessor. But if they have not satisfied their function, or have even permitted themselves to be corrupted by others with money or gifts, they can be bound to restitution:

a) by reason of salary unduly accepted. He who does not do, or does badly, what he ought, is the same as if he stole a stipend, and he ought to restore in proportion to his defect;

b) also by reason of damage inflicted from grave negligence or depraved will, whether public, which comes upon the community, or private, by burdening someone unjustly or violating his strict right;

c) moreover, by reason of money or a gift accepted from private persons: for if they accepted it for faithfully fulfilling the office, they are bound to restore to those who gave it, since a stipend is given to them for fulfilling the office, and therefore they have no right to obtain anything else; but if they accepted it for fulfilling the office unjustly, they are bound to restore to him upon whom they inflicted unjust damage, and indeed for the whole damage inflicted.