Commencing with rules founded on public policy, we may note the famous principle--_Salus populi suprema lex_ (xii. Tables: Bacon, _Maxims_, reg. 12)--"the public welfare is the highest law." It is on this maxim that the coercive action of the State towards individual liberty in a hundred matters is based. To the same category belong the maxims--_Summa ratio est quae pro religione facit_ (Co. _Litt._ 341 a)--"the best rule is that which advances religion"--a maxim which finds its application when the enforcement of foreign laws or judgments supposed to violate our own laws or the principles of natural justice is in question; and _Dies dominicus non est juridicus_, which exempts Sunday from the lawful days for juridical acts. Among the maxims relating to the crown, the most important are _Rex non potest peccare_ (2 Rolle R. 304)--"The King can do no wrong"--which enshrines the principle of ministerial responsibility, and _Nullum tempus occurrit regi_ (2 Co. Inst. 273)--"lapse of time does not bar the crown," a maxim qualified by various enactments in modern times. Passing to the judicial office and the administration of justice, we may refer to the rules--_Audi alteram partem_--a proposition too familiar to need either translation or comment; _Nemo debet esse judex in propriâ suâ causâ_ (12 Co. _Rep._ 114)--"no man ought to be judge in his own cause"--a maxim which French law, and the legal systems based upon or allied to it, have embodied in an elaborate network of rules for judicial challenge; and the maxim which defines the relative functions of judge and jury, _Ad quaestionem facti non respondent judices, ad quaestionem legis non respondent juratores_ (8 Co. _Rep._ 155). The maxim _Boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem_ (Ch. Prec. 329) is certainly erroneous as it stands, as a judge has no right to "extend his jurisdiction." If _justitiam_ is substituted for _jurisdictionem_, as Lord Mansfield said it should be (1 Burr. 304), the maxim is near the truth. A group of maxims supposed to embody certain fundamental principles of legal right and obligations may next be referred to: (a) _Ubi jus ibi remedium_ (see Co. _Litt._ 197 b)--a maxim to which the evolution of the flexible "action on the case," by which wrongs unknown to the "original writs" were dealt with, was historically due, but which must be taken with the gloss _Damnum absque injuria_--"there are forms of actual damage which do not constitute legal injury" for which the law supplies no remedy; (b) _Actus Dei nemini facit injuriam_ (2 Blackstone, 122)--and its allied maxim, _Lex non cogit ad impossibilia_ (Co. _Litt._ 231 b)--on which the whole doctrine of _vis major_ (_force majeure_) and impossible conditions in the law of contract has been built up. In this category may also be classed _Volenti non fit injuria_ (Wingate, _Maxims_), out of which sprang the theory--now profoundly modified by