The administration of justice in ancient Athens and in Plato's Laws ‐Some comparisons, Politics, 12:1, 116-120 (original) (raw)
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Plato’s interest in the concept of justice is pronounced and familiar. So too is his antagonism towards classical Athenian democracy. This paper connects the two by locating Plato’s transcendental conceptualization of justice as a direct response to the inter-subjective construction of justice in Athens’ democratic courts. The paper comprises four sections. The first identifies Athens’ popular courts as Plato’s primary institutional target when criticizing democracy. The second examines the difference between the concepts “to dikaion” and “dikaiosynē” and considers the special importance of this distinction in Plato’s Republic. The third examines how “to dikaion” was decided in the popular courts in Athens, and the fourth casts Plato’s treatment of this concept as an intervention against the conceptualization of what is right suggested by these practices. I draw special attention to an affinity between Plato’s approach and the alternative Athenian conception of right advanced in its homicide courts, in which context the gods were thought to be especially interested. I suggest that Plato’s distinctive contribution to the theorization of justice can be understood as an attempt to extend the conception of “to dikaion” advanced in Athens’ homicide courts to cover the field of right in general--with significant consequences for the history of political thought.
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In the Statesman, Plato seems to be advocating that in the absence of a true king who will rule independently of laws, the next best thing as far as just rule is concerned is to adhere rigidly to existing laws, whatever they are. The rule of the true king is given as an example of virtuous rule in the sense that virtue politics or jurisprudence holds that laws cannot always deal justly with particular cases. But Plato's view of what we must do when there are no true kings forthcoming seems to preclude a virtue theoretical understanding of politics and laws. In this paper I will investigate the view that the image of the true king, who relies on written laws for convenience only, provides a model for a more realistic appeal to virtue in jurisprudence, that is, a respect of laws that is compatible with equity, in the sense understood by Aristotle.
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Plato is an unfamiliar starting place from which to investigate classical methods of statutory or constitutional interpretation. Yet, as classical texts come, Plato's Laws offers a robust account of legislative intent and the role of statutory interpretation in a properly constituted polis. Moreover, it appears that Plato's account informs Aristotle's famous commentary on epieikeia in Rhetoric and Nicomachean Ethics. First, I examine exactly how Plato grounds proper interpretation in systems with written constitutions, such as Magnesia. This means my descriptive account is mostly relegated to Laws. And this is for good reason. Laws represents an intentional and practical departure from the aspirational components of the Republic. For Plato, equitable interpretation, which is used in particular cases, is a subset of a broader equitable enterprise called Sumplaēroun. Under this doctrine, judicial and legislative practices fill in gaps left by a written constitutional substructure. Second, I compare Plato's and Aristotle's accounts of equitable interpretation. Aristotle clearly borrowed from Plato's insights but departs in important respects. The ambiguity in Aristotle's account, furthermore, can be clarified by viewing it in light of Plato's. Lastly, I lay out further implications of Plato's theory on contemporary Constitutional theory.
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