ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a common subject for a controversy, a basis, despite objections such as R. G. Collingwood's, for analyzing, comparing, and contrasting the theories of justice across the ages and across cultures. It finds representative and even paradigmatic expressions of each of these basic positions in theories of justice that are set forth in Great Books of the Western World. Justice is identified with obedience to the positive law, and we may accordingly call this the Positive Law theory of justice. A full and complete statement of the Positive Law theory of justice calls for two distinct considerations. One is an account of justice in terms of positive law, the other a theory of meaning that explains, or rather explains away, uses of the terms that appear to involve more than law. The classic Roman definition of justice as rendering to each his right is fully endorsed by the Natural Right theory.
