Divisions of Law

This has been a fun week getting this blog set up.  Why not end this week by creating another blog?  

I have been working for a number of years on a study of a little-known work of legal scholarship by Jean Bodin, the Juris Universi Distributio, or a 'division of the whole law.'  Probably the most notable feature of this work is that it was originally presented in a tabular form and was meant to be a visual guide in organizing all the major concepts that supposedly make up a complete legal system.  

I've wanted, for some time, to display this unusual work, and I created the Divisions of Law blog to post occasional updates on that project.  I probably won't update that as much as I will here for The Science of Right project, but I will record occasional progress and will give me some motivation to finish up that book.

Jean Bodin, Juris Universi Distributio (Paris: Jacques Du Puys, 1578) fol. F.  Courtesy of Princeton University Library.  Photo: Daniel Lee, 2022.

This is an extremely rare text, and I was able to locate a copy of it in Princeton.  Last October, when I visited the University Center for Human Values to present a paper, I spent an extra day to examine this copy and take some photos.  The photo above is Bodin's brief discussion of the Finis Iuris (the 'end' or 'aim' of law) which is Iustitia ('justice').  What interests me here is that he identifies three different types of justice, each of which are based on Pythagorean ratios - arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic justice.  The last of the three, justice harmonique, was Bodin's most original contribution to the theory of justice and will the subject of a chapter in that book.