Second Part: Concerning Legal Justice

S. Th. II-II, q. 58, a. 5 and 6.

259. Legal justice is the virtue which inclines men to giving to the community what is owed to it, or which orders acts due to the common good to this end.¹

¹ St. Thomas can be compared, in Eth., l. I; De Reg. princ., l. I, c. 14 and 15; II-II, q. 58, a. 5 and 6, with the commentary of Bannez; — Vermeersch, Quaestiones de Iustitia; — Michel, La Question sociale et les principes théologiques. Justice légale et charité; — M. St. Gillet, Conscience chrétienne et Justice sociale; — and especially A. Pottier, De Iure et Iustitia, whose hearers in school we were, and whose doctrine we here report compendiously with a grateful mind. See also Hering, De genuina notione iustitiae generalis seu legalis, in Angelicum, 1937.

It is a special virtue, distinct from the others, by which one is borne toward the good of the community of which he himself is a part; per se it directly regards, as its proper end and object, the common good, and therefore orders subjects to the republic. It therefore renders what is due to the community as such, and its formal object is the special honesty of procuring the common good. But this common good is a sufficient motive so that some honest act can be terminated at it on account of itself, as if someone establishes or observes a law, or serves in war, or pays tribute on account of the good of the republic. Therefore there is some special virtue which is borne toward it.

It is rightly called legal, because in the community the actions of private persons are ordered by law to the common good.² It is also called general justice, not indeed by predication and by reason of essence, as if it were every virtue or the complex of all virtues; but according to virtue and by reason of matter, because it tends to the general good and can order the acts of all virtues to this good.

² I-II, q. 90, q. 2, ad 1; II-II, q. 58, a. 5.

But by its formal account it differs from every other virtue which has a certain likeness with it:

a) from obedience, which acts because something is commanded by a legitimate superior; hence obedience intends to obey the commanding superior, without attending to the common good, while legal justice procures the common good, even if it is not specially commanded;

b) from piety toward one's fatherland: piety regards the fatherland according as it is the principle of our procreation and education; legal justice according as it is the common good. Moreover, nothing prevents one of the two motives from being attended to while abstracting from the other;

c) from observance, which renders the worship of honor and submission due to a superior, while legal justice renders what is due to the community;

d) from charity toward one's neighbor: for even he who neither loves God nor his neighbor on account of God can do many things from the motive of the common good; and conversely, one can be led to acting from charity without being specially moved by the common good.

260. Subject of legal justice. — Legal justice inclines the members of the community, whether superiors or subjects, to rendering what is due to the community as such. But it is in the prince or superiors principally and, as it were, architectonically, insofar as through laws they establish and command those things which pertain to the common good and to the best administration of the republic, so that each one conducts himself as the common good and perfection of the republic demand. Hence the laws and statutes of the prince, and the remaining things which the rulers of the republic commit to execution, insofar as they direct them to that end, pertain to this virtue. In subjects it is present secondarily and ministerially, as in those committing to execution the things which have been constituted by rulers, while they accommodate themselves to the laws for the same end. Hence Aristotle says that the object of this virtue is not the equitable but the legal, or that which is conformable to law.

Therefore in the prince it is principally, because it belongs to him to govern, that is, to move toward the end; therefore to move toward the common good pertains to him as to the principal cause; — also architectonically, because the prince in procuring the common good is the directive, as it were architectonic, and dispositive cause. In subjects it is secondarily, because under the prince they ought to lead toward the end; — and as it were ministerially, that is, executively.

261. Matter to be treated. — In the first place, one must speak of legal justice, which excels particular justice, because it immediately pursues the common good itself, while particular justice immediately intends private good; but the common good excels private good, just as the whole is preferable to the part. We shall speak:

1. of pursuing the common good, which is the proper object of legal justice;

2. of procuring the common good;

3. of the defense of the common good.