Article II: On the Coercive Force or Sanction of Law

235. A law is sanctioned when it is decreed holy, that is, inviolable; whence sanction (bekrachtiging) is that which confirms and urges the law. Hence:

1. among modern jurists, sanction not rarely is called the act by which the king or president of the republic, with his name subscribed, as it were completes the law and renders it firm, so that it can be promulgated and obligate; whence that act precedes promulgation and announcement of the law;

2. among moralists it is rather coercion or penal coercion by which law is confirmed and urged. It can be regarded a) actively (as coercive force), namely, the act or decree of the legislator by which an evil or penalty is established for those violating the law, or, on the contrary, a good or reward for those observing the law; and b) passively, namely, the penal coercion itself or retribution of penalty, or also denial or concession of reward, which is added to the law to confirm it and to compensate the detriment which comes to society from violation of the law: the penalty, or also reward, established by the legislator in those who transgress it or observe it.

236. Sanction differs from obligation: 1) the latter pertains to the directive force of law, the former to its coercive force; 2) the latter equally affects all subjects, the former first per se and immediately affects only transgressors of the law; 3) the latter per se is conformable to the inclination of the will toward good, the former per se is repugnant to the will and is opposed to its natural inclination toward good; 4) obligation is a binding to good order, sanction is immediately the privation of some good.

237. Therefore sanction is the complement of law and of obligation. Its end is threefold:

a) that subjects be moved efficaciously to observance of the law: for knowledge of the law itself and consciousness of obligation do not now sufficiently induce man, insofar as he is subject to the enticements of concupiscence, to keeping the law;

b) that the moral order be completed by retribution of reward, and especially restored by retribution of penalty: for the order of justice demands that penalty be repaid to violation of the law, in order to restore equality; or also sometimes asks that reward be granted to observance of the law;

c) that subjects rebelling against the legislator be subjected to his authority, because those who refused voluntarily to subject themselves to law are compelled against their will to undergo evil. He who rises up against some order, says St. Thomas, must be repressed by the prince of the order (I-II, q. 87, a. 1).

Therefore law, in order to move us efficaciously and direct us to the end, must be confirmed by sanction.

Its influence is twofold: 1) antecedently, under the preventive respect, when before the placing of the act, by means of promise or threats, it induces men to keeping the law; whence the scope of sanction is that the law be kept: thus it is for correction;

2. consequently, under the retributive respect, when after the deed reward or penalty is repaid to those acting well or badly: thus it is for coercion.

Hence a) in the state of threat, the primary end of sanction is amendment or preservation, in one word: the avoidance of sin;

b) in the state of execution, the principal end is the restoration of order; but secondarily it can have amendment.