Legal Dissertation on the Abstinence of Natural Law from the Fallacious Rules of the Putative Summary Process

office would also require him to justly decide a just cause that was poorly defended and presented.

§. 17. Therefore, the opinion is not clearly founded that suspensive remedies remedies that delay the execution of a judgment against a sentence are of natural law. For a party cannot be considered burdened if they were not sufficiently heard de jure deducendo regarding the deduction of law, once it is demonstrated that it was clearly not necessary to hear them on that matter. Indeed, it could not be established how often these remedies should be granted, for by always finding some legal point, parties could urge that they are still burdened, and so on to infinity. Nor is it an objection that a very great prejudice might be inflicted by a matter judged res judicata adjudicated matter. We do not believe that the effect of a matter judged is of natural law, nor that by such law a sentence can pass into a matter judged at a certain time, like a prescription the acquisition of a right through the passage of time, which is not founded on this law unless for time immemorial. It does not matter to the business that natural law does not want the ownership of things to be in uncertainty, or that dereliction the abandonment of property is presumed after such a long time. For by natural law, the ownership of things is never in uncertainty; rather, even after such a certain time, this person is the owner rather than the one who held it until now, and thus the ownership of the thing always belonged to that person. Dereliction, however, is only presumed until the contrary is expressly declared, and then the presumption yields to the truth. If, indeed, someone could effect something through new proofs after the sentence, natural law would not reject that. Therefore, if a sentence is passed against the proven truth of the fact or clearly against the law, should the parties never be heard? This does not follow from what has been said, but rather the contrary. For it is the office of the judge to correct and revoke these things at any time, even after the matter is judged and has been long possessed, namely by the benefit of natural law, without which the matter judged would not otherwise be valid, as we have said. We mean that this does not square with suspensive remedies, which suspend execution, for the purpose that it might be better known how poorly such a process of the aforementioned remedies is formed, so that each party may deduce their own rights, lest they be left undefended. For it would be the office of the judge, upon the mere petition of the injured party, without hearing the other side, to correct the grievance brought against law or fact. The cloak of natural law is also used here only to the extent that revealing it is more beneficial than harmful.