Theme: Constitutional Order

**A DECIDEDLY CHRISTIAN SET OF LAWS IN 1603

**December 9th, 2010

I hadn’t read Hugo Grotius’ Commentary before today. It is an interesting attempt to provide a coherent set of legal principles. Even if it is just very simply a recitation of Biblical principles with european legal conventions.

I would never agree to place such faith in Magistrates, or any other officer of the state. They are only human beings, and not exceptional human beings at that.

I give my violence to the state to use justly on my behalf, so that I may spend my time in other activities, in our division of knowledge and labor. That does not mean that it has the ability to act justly on my behalf, or the will to act justly on my behalf, nor has it demonstrated that it has the tendency to act justly on my behalf. I do not believe that any officer of the state is better equipped to make judgements over property than I am. And those are the only judgements a man need know. If he must do other than that, he submits to servitude.

Now, once we possess a significant market, we must have administrators, and regulators of that market, and citizens who adhere to the manners, morals, ethics, taxes and regulations that prevent fraud, theft, and violence within that market, are it’s shareholders. Those shareholders will often seek to escape payment, or to transfer liability and risk onto others, or to draw more than their earnings from the corporation of the market that we call the state. I recognize that such thefts are invisible to men without the adminstration of the state to monitor them. As such, I agree that we must have courts and jurors.

However, should these men, in the observance of their duties, abridge the laws of property, of theft, of violence, or fraud and deception in the course of their duties — even if it is to pursue just ends, or if such men, in the name of ease, or efficiency, or laziness or stupidity, or most importantly, the fallacy of just democratic law making, then I do not allow them to use my violence on my behalf, to seek reparation from my fellow men. And instead, I must withdraw my violence from the account of the state, and use it at my own discretion.

Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty [1603]

by Hugo Grotius

Table Of Rules And Laws Compiled From Chapter II Of The Commentary

**Rules**

rule i. What God has shown to be His Will, that is law.

rule ii. What the common consent of mankind has shown to be the will of all, that is law.

rule iii. What each individual has indicated to be his will, that is law with respect to him.

rule iv. What the commonwealth has indicated to be its will, that is law for the whole body of citizens.

rule v. What the commonwealth has indicated to be its will, that is law for the individual citizens in their mutual relations.

rule vi. What the magistrate has indicated to be his will, that is law in regard to the whole body of citizens.

rule vii. What the magistrate has indicated to be his will, that is law in regard to the citizens as individuals.

rule viii. Whatever all states have indicated to be their will, that is law in regard to all of them.

rule ix. In regard to judicial procedure, precedence shall be given to the state which is the defendant, or whose citizen is the defendant; but if the said state proves remiss in the discharge of its judicial duty, then that state shall be the judge, which is itself the plaintiff, or whose citizen is the plaintiff.

**Laws**

law i. It shall be permissible to defend [one’s own] life and to shun that which threatens to prove injurious.

law ii. It shall be permissible to acquire for oneself, and to retain, those things which are useful for life.

law iii. Let no one inflict injury upon his fellow.

law iv. Let no one seize possession of that which has been taken into the possession of another.

law v. Evil deeds must be corrected.

law vi. Good deeds must be recompensed.

law vii. Individual citizens should not only refrain from injuring other citizens, but should furthermore protect them, both as a whole and as individuals.

law viii. Citizens should not only refrain from seizing one another’s possessions, whether these be held privately or in common, but should furthermore contribute individually both that which is necessary to [other] individuals and that which is necessary to the whole.

law ix. No citizen shall seek to enforce his own right against a fellow citizen, save by judicial procedure.

law x. The magistrate shall act in all matters for the good of the state.

law xi. The state shall uphold as valid every act of the magistrate.

law xii. Neither the state nor any citizen thereof shall seek to enforce his own right against another state or its citizens, save by judicial procedure.

law xiii. In cases where [the laws] can be observed simultaneously, let them [all] be observed; when this is impossible, the law of superior rank shall prevail.