The Struggle for Law
If I were to sum all that I have thus far said, I might call this last exclamation the watchword of our modern jurisprudence and practice. It has advanced far on the road on which Justinian entered; it is not the creditor, but the debtor, who awakens its sympathy, and it would rather sacrifice the rights of a hundred creditors than, by any possibility, deal too severely with a debtor.
The person not versed in the law might almost believe that it was scarcely possible to add anything to this partial lawlessness, the legacy to us of a false theory of legists, who busy themselves with our civil law and mode of procedure; and yet, even this theory is surpassed by the aberration of former criminalists, which may be characterized as an attempt on the very idea of law and as the most odious crime against the feeling of legal right committed by science. I here refer to the shameful paralyzing of the right of self-defense, that original right of man, which, as Cicero says, is a law enacted by nature itself, and which the Roman jurists
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