ABSTRACT
I The central theme of Lucas’s doctrine of legal administration is the conception that it is through coercive means that the idea of justice finds its practical realization and adequate expression. Judgement properly so called is solely that judicial decision which embodies and incarnates the idea of justice. The abstract idea of justice manifests itself in the judgement which, in its turn, commands authority precisely because the idea of justice is embodied in it. Judgements divorced from the idea of justice or in obvious disagreement with the notion of justice are devoid of any validity or authority. Lucas expresses this leading thought in these words: ‘Judicium secundum propriam significationem nominis dicit denuntiationem juris sive justitiae’.1 Through their concrete pronouncement backed by the coercive power of the body politic, the judiciary realize the idea and aim of law. They hypostatize, in their judgements, the idea of justice, upon which the concept of law rests. The judge is, so to speak, the mouthpiece of the law. It is he who transmutes the abstract legal term into a living reality, thereby making concrete what before was abstract.
