Identical in effect with the maxim: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio.
16. Inter arma leges silent.
Cicero, Pro Milone, IV. 10.
This maxim has a double application: (1) As between the state and its external enemies, the laws are absolutely silent. No alien enemy has any claim to the protection of the laws or of the courts of justice. He is destitute of any legal standing before the law, and the government may do as it pleases with him and his. (2) Even as regards the rights of subjects and citizens, the law may be put to silence by necessity in times of civil disturbance. Necessitas non habet legem. Extrajudicial force may lawfully supersede the ordinary process and course of law, whenever it is needed for the protection of the state and the public order against illegal violence. See § 36.
17. Invito beneficium non datur.
D. 50. 17. 69.
The law confers upon a man no rights or benefits which he does not desire. Whoever waives, abandons, or disclaims a right will lose it. See § 122.
18. Juris praecepta sunt haec: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere.
D. 1. 1. 10. 1. Just. Inst. 1. 1. 3.
“These are the precepts of the law: to live honestly, to hurt no one, and to give to every man his own.” Attempts have been sometimes made to exhibit these three praecepta juris as based on a logical division of the sphere of legal obligation into three parts. This, however, is not the case. They are simply different modes of expressing the same thing, and each of them is wide enough to cover the whole field of legal duty. The third of them, indeed, is simply a variant of the received definition of justice itself: Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas jus suum cuique tribuendi. D. 1. 1. 10 pr. Just. Inst. 1. 1. 1.