Article III. Supplements to the Doctrine

48. Defects of the other opinions. (Cf. art. 1.)

a) Molina takes the object of legal justice too broadly when he thinks that its rationale is found in every act which is exercised for the common good.

b) We refuted Lessius in the preceding number by answering his argument.

c) The characteristics which Cardinal de Lugo establishes for legal justice when he says that it inclines the citizen toward the common good of the commonwealth “because of the peculiar conjunction which the agent has with the commonwealth”—those characteristics, I say, α) cannot agree with justice for a twofold reason, since justice rests upon distinction, not conjunction, and regards a debt; β) nor are they to be attributed to a special virtue, since one charity observes the various orders of conjunctions.

d) Those more recent authors err who judge legal justice to be the same as obedience to the laws. For obedience, if taken formally, is moved by a different rationale, since it pursues the special moral goodness which shines forth in the conformity of the will with its rule; but if it is taken materially, it is concerned only with those things which are in some manner commanded.

e) No less are those mistaken who do not distinguish this legal justice from piety toward one’s fatherland. For piety observes in one’s fatherland the benefit of origin, and urges us less strictly in relation to our fatherland than in relation to our parents; while, on the contrary, we must disregard our parents in preference to the right which legal justice renders.

49. The generality and speciality of legal justice. Its generality is not one of essence, since that virtue has a proper form, but one of causality and matter, insofar as it commands the acts of all the virtues and assumes their matter for itself; charity also does this. But this latter virtue additionally possesses matter proper to itself: for there are acts which owe their immediate moral goodness to impelling charity; while legal justice derives its speciality from the formal rationale alone. For the formal rationale of this virtue is the moral goodness of rendering what is owed to the community as such. But that which is owed to the community as such is a certain good disposition of the agent, or an act of some virtue (cf. 7 b and 46), so that the moral goodness of legal justice appears to be mediate.

But if you ask about the elicited act of this virtue, we answer that it consists in the affection of rendering this debt.

It is helpful to receive a splendid confirmation of this from Gregory of Valencia:¹ “Human law constitutes an act in the species of a virtue, not in just any manner, but as necessary and owed, as it pertains to this or that virtue. For otherwise it is certain that an act, in order to be apt matter for human law, must be morally good from its genus or from its circumstances, and accordingly of such a kind as to pertain to some species of virtue, just as every good act must pertain to one. For if it were of itself either evil or indifferent or useless, a just law could not be enacted or established concerning it.”

¹ In I–II, disp. 7, q. 5, pt. 7, at the end.

50. The debt of legal justice is nothing other than a necessity—either then imposed for the first time, or imposed under a new title on account of the common good of society—of doing or omitting certain things which already pertained to some particular virtue.

For the first time, I say, if the act was previously a matter of free choice; under a new title, if the act was already prescribed by divine law on account of the good of the primary order, which is terminated at God.

Moreover, to impose in this manner the necessity of various acts is, in the fullest sense, to exercise jurisdiction. Indeed, the magistrate to whom disputes are brought does not exercise jurisdiction except because the parties are bound to observe his sentence as a right established for them.

And from this the true rationale of the power of jurisdiction comes to light; and it becomes apparent why acts commanded through this power are said to bind from the motive of the virtue which governs the order in which the command is given: so that a precept of fasting binds from Temperance, and a precept of hearing Mass binds from Religion. This in no way belongs to one commanding from dominative power.

But the virtues themselves, insofar as they are under the command of legal justice, sometimes receive the name of legal justice (St. Thomas, II–II, q. 58, art. 6).

51. Among more recent authors, mention is not infrequently made of social justice. By this expression they can signify a special virtue, which in that case can be no other than legal justice; or through it they can designate the aggregate of virtues which are employed in society. For just as universal rectitude in relation to God is adorned with the name of justice (cf. 12), so this civil rationale of rectitude, by which someone through various virtues conducts himself toward society as he ought (and therefore justly), is by no means unsuited to the name of justice.²

² Cf. R. D. Pottier, diss. 3, sect. 1, no. 33.

52. The subject of general justice. Because most of the duties of general justice, at least the positive duties, are defined by laws, that justice is said to be in the prince (the lawgiver) “principally and as it were architectonically.”³ For the functions of the one ordering are more excellent than the functions of those who execute the ordering. It is also apparent that, in the right disposition of affairs, the prince is more readily moved by the intention of rendering a debt to the community, so that he acquires for himself a special merit of general justice. Nevertheless—and this should be carefully noted—this prince, while in the manner of an architect he commands the plan of the social edifice, exercises commutative justice in addition to general justice. For by undertaking the office, he has obligated himself by strict justice to furnish those services.

³ II–II, q. 58, art. 6.

Therefore, the prince can in no way be considered the one to whom the debt of legal justice is rendered. The subject of the right is society; he is not the subject of the right but, like the other citizens, the subject of justice. Nor is that justice one thing in the prince and another in the subjects.

53. You will ask about the subject of the right, or the community in which general justice has place. And while Cardinal de Lugo, deceived by his own opinion, is compelled to imagine for various communities various special virtues which imitate the nature of legal justice,⁴ it is easily evident to us that legal justice is found only in a perfect society. In this alone is found the faculty of making laws and jurisdiction.

⁴ Cf. disp. 1, no. 66.

You will say: Nevertheless, lesser communities—for example, religious orders and municipalities—possess jurisdiction.

We answer that this jurisdiction is nothing other than a part of the jurisdiction which belongs to a perfect society and which is communicated by it to these lesser societies insofar as the interest of the commonwealth requires.

R. D. Pottier writes elegantly: “There is a twofold life whose perfect sufficiency must be procured through a community: eternal life or eternal happiness, which in the Church of Christ and through the Church of Christ must be procured, and temporal life or temporal happiness, duly subordinated to eternal life, which must be brought forth through the civil State and in the civil State. Other communities or particular societies do not regard or procure a common good specifically distinct from these two, but in some partial or particular manner assist in procuring the perfect sufficiency either of eternal life or of temporal life.”⁵

⁵ Op. cit., diss. 3, sect. 1, no. 34. The distinguished author appears less felicitous in the same number when he places private societies of merchants and municipalities in the same category. For communities which constitute a true moral body must be distinguished from those which are one thing by a mere fiction of law; communities in which jurisdiction inheres must be distinguished from those which entirely lack it.

54. Concerning the international rationale of general justice.

But you could, as though from the opposite side, ask whether general justice is contained within the boundaries of a perfect society, or whether that virtue is also incumbent upon one so that it may satisfy a debt of some international common good.

This question coheres with another of no less importance: whether or not a certain international society of nations is to be admitted, one resting not on mere compact,⁶ but deriving its origin from nature itself. For if there is a society of this kind, there will also be some common good whose exigency must be satisfied; there will therefore be a certain office of general justice.

⁶ In order to distinguish this conjunction from that which associates federated states.

Come now: if already in his own age Suárez,⁷ argued from the necessity of mutual aid and communication that a society of this kind existed among civil societies, by which they might obtain that which was lacking for the perfect sufficiency of each one, how much more today, with increased commerce among nations and with a certain unity of customs and culture having been introduced, it seems that assent must be given to this social conjunction. Nature, while producing mutual necessities, at the same time impels men to enter into society and efficaciously sanctions its constitution. Moreover, you will scarcely explain otherwise certain altogether particular points of international law which must be observed even in war, but concerning which no formal agreement has been made: for example, that the high sea is subject to the jurisdiction of no nation, while the nations bordering the sea possess a tract of three miles.

⁷ De Legibus, bk. 2, ch. 19, no. 9.

Nor, as R. P. Schiffini objects,⁸ must fear thereby be entertained for the liberty and autonomy of kingdoms, since that society and the jurisdiction which it consequently possesses are circumscribed by definite limits. Must not the civil State itself already observe as sacred the rights of domestic society?

⁸ Philosophia Moralis, no. 219.

As is evident, that society is of a perfectly democratic form, so that the making of law belongs to the whole multitude of nations; the members of which it is immediately composed are perfect societies; it is incomplete with respect to its object, and broader or narrower according to the number of goods which must be supplied in common. Therefore, it is not repugnant that several societies of this kind exist in number, and that a closer one be constituted among neighboring peoples while a more universal one embraces all civilized nations.

Taparelli discusses this argument at length.⁹ The same is approved by R. P. Van Gestel;¹⁰ nor does R. D. Pottier defend a dissimilar opinion.¹¹ Some confirmation is added from the condemned proposition LXII of the Syllabus: “The principle which they call non-intervention must be proclaimed and observed.”

⁹ Saggio Teoretico, nos. 1357–1403.

¹⁰ Op. cit., no. XLII.

¹¹ Op. cit., diss. 3, sect. 1, nos. 39–42.