United States vs. Schooner Peggy, 1 Cranch, 109,

CHAPTER I.

The sources of Municipal or Civil Law usually two-fold: Usage, or Common Law; and Statute Law-In America a third superadded: Constitutional Law-The two last written; of these, the Interpretation and Construction belong to the Judiciary-The object of this volume, to define the limits of legislative and judicial power; and to give the rules which govern the application of Constitutional and Statute, in other words, of written Law.

MAN, in whatever situation he may be placed, finds himself under the control of rules of action emanating from an authority to which he is compelled to bow,in other words, of Law. The moment that he comes into existence, he is the subject of the will of God, as declared in what we term the laws of nature. As soon as he enters into society, he finds himself controlled by the moral law (more or less perfect and active according to the condition of the community to which he belongs, and the degree in which it has accepted the divine precepts of our religion), and also by the municipal or civil law.* When States come to be organized as separate and independent governments, and their relations grow frequent and complicated, there is superadded the law of nations. These codes are variously enforced, but each has its own peculiar

* Blackstone, in his introductory lecture, has referred to the inappropriateness of the phrase municipal law. "I call it the municipal law," he says, "in compliance with common speech, for though strictly that expression denotes the particular customs of one single municipal or free town, yet it may, with sufficient propriety, be applied to any one state or nation which is governed by the same laws or customs."

sanction. They are curiously interwoven together, and in their combination tend to produce that progress and improvement of the race which we believe Christianity teaches, and to which we hope civilization leads.

Thus, the law of nature, the moral law, the municipal law, and the law of nations, form a system of restraints before which the most consummate genius, the most vehement will, the angriest passions, and the fiercest desires, are compelled to bend, and the pressure of which the individual is forced to acknowledge his incapacity to resist.

Of these various systems of rules for the government and control of men, the municipal or civil law asserts its claim emphatically as a distinct branch of knowledge, and is that to which we refer when we speak of the profession of the law, the study of the law, the science of the law.

Municipal law is defined by the great English commentator, as "a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a state, commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong." Our American Kent describes it "as a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power of a state."*

*Kent, Com. i. 446. Legis virtus hæc est, imperare, vetare, permittere, punire. L. 7 Ff. de Leg. There has been much scholastic discussion as to the proper definition of the term Law; and when we come to the subject of the boundaries of legislative and judicial power, we shall find that in practice it is not very easy to give the phrase an accurate or fitting interpretation. Cicero, XI. Philip. 12, and after him Bracton, Coke, and Blackstone (as in the text), define it to be a holy sanction commanding whatever is honest, and forbidding the contrary. Sanctio justa, jubens honesta et prohibens contraria.-Black. Com., Lib. i. ch. i. Blackstone's citation is incorrect, the precise words are, Est enim lex nihil aliud nisi recta et a numine deorum tracta ratio, imperans honesta, prohibens contraria.

Bentham, in his Fragment on Government, attacks Blackstone's doctrines