Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty

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Hugo Grotius. Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty

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COMMENTARY ON THE LAW OF PRIZE AND BOOTY

ENLIGHTENMENT CLASSICS

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Thus, on the basis of the earlier rules, the following additional rule has developed: Whatever the commonwealth has indicated to be its will, that is law [ius] in regard to the whole body of citizens. This principle is the source of that branch of law described by the philosophers as θετικόν [positive], or νομικόν [conventional], or even ἴδιον [particular, domestic],10 and by the jurists as “municipal law.” It is law not in an absolute but in a relative sense.e The distinction may be illustrated by means of the following analogy: if an ox is exchanged for a sheep, the objects exchanged are certainly not equal in themselves, but equal merely in that the contracting parties have been pleased to make them so. Thus it is quite understandable that what would not otherwise be illicit should become so in this relative sense.f Nor is it strange that laws of the kind in question should change with their causea—that is to say, in accordance with the human will—while natural precepts, based as they are upon a constant cause, remain constant in themselves; or that the former should vary in different localities, since the various communities differ, of course, in their conception of what is good.

A Judgement [or Judicial Pronouncement]

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