Page:Struggle for Law (1915).djvu/93

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Struggle for Rights a Personal Duty


This distinction between objective and subjective injustice is, from a legislative and scientific point of view, a very important one. It expresses the manner in which the law looks upon the matter, and it justifies the consequences which the violation of law draws after it. But it does not at all decide how the individual shall look upon it; how his feeling of legal right will be excited by an injustice done him, a feeling which does not pulsate in accordance with the abstract notions of the system. The circumstances of the case may be such that the person whose rights have been violated may have every reason, in a conflict about rights, which, according to the law, falls under the head of an objective violation of law, to proceed on the assumption of an evil intent, of conscious injustice on the part of his opponent; and this judgment of his, will rightly decide what his course towards his opponent should be. The fact that the law gives me the very same condictio ex mutuo against the heir of my debtor who knows nothing of the debt, and makes the payment

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