For Aulus Caecina (66-70)

But in this cause, when you are defending yourself by the wording and letter of the law,— when this is your argument, “Where were you driven from? Do you mean to say that you were driven from a place which you were prevented from approaching? You were kept off, not driven away;”—when this is what you say, “I confess that I collected men,—I confess that I armed them,—I confess that I threatened you with death,—I confess that this conduct is punishable by the praetor's interdict, if his intention and if equity is to prevail; but I find in the interdict one word under which I can shelter myself. I did not drive you from that place when I only prevented you from coming to it.”

For those who argue in this way, if they mean that those who sit on the bench have given some wrong decisions, should not say that we ought not to be guided by the civil law, but by stupid men. If they admit that the lawyers give proper answers, and still say that different decisions ought to be given, that is saying that wrong decisions ought to be given; for it is quite impossible that a decision of the judge on a point of law should be correct when given one way, and an answer of a counsel should be right too when given the other way. It is quite clear that no one has any right to be accounted learned in the law, who decides that an incorrect decision is conformable to law. But sometimes contrary decisions have been given.

In the first place, have they been given rightly, or wrongly? If they were given rightly, that was the law which was decided to be so. If they were wrong, then it cannot be doubtful which are to be blamed, the judges or the lawyers. Besides, if any decision has been given on a disputed point, they are not deciding against the opinion of the lawyers, if they give sentence contrary to the decision of Mucius, any more than they would be deciding in compliance with their authority, if sentence were given according to the precedent of Manilius. Forsooth, Crassus himself did not plead his cause before the centumviri in such a way as to speak against the lawyers; but he urged that the arguments which Scaevola brought forward in his defence were not law; and he not only brought forward good arguments to that point, but he also quoted Quintus Mucius, his father-in-law, and many other most learned men, as precedents.