Marsilius of Padua: The Defender of the Peace

Now that we have separated out these understandings of law, we wish to show its necessity in terms of ends, when it is taken in its last and most proper signification. The principal necessity is civil justice and the common advantage, but a secondary necessity is a kind of security for those in the position of prince – especially by hereditary succession – and the long duration of their principate. The first necessity, then, is as follows: since it is necessary to institute within a polity that without which civil judgements cannot be made in a way that is simply speaking correct, and also that through which they are passed in due fashion and saved from defect insofar as this is possible for human acts. Law is a thing of this sort, to the extent that the prince has been limited to passing civil judgements in accordance with it. Therefore it is necessary to institute law within a polity. The first proposition of this demonstration is almost self-evident, and very close to being incapable of demonstration. The certainty of it should and can also be understood from chapter 5 of this discourse, section 7. The second proposition will become clear in the following way: since for a judgement to be completely good there is required, on the part of judges, both a righteous affection and a true cognisance of the matters to be judged, the opposites of which corrupt civil judgements. For a perverted affection on the part of the judge, like hate or love or avarice, corrupts his desire. But these things are kept out of the judgement, and it is saved from them, when the judge or prince has been limited to passing judgements in accordance with the laws, because the law lacks all perverted affection. For it has not been made with an eye to friend or foe, help or hurt, but universally with regard to the individual acting well or badly in civil terms.