assize | equity | advocate | basilica | dharma
Around 1140 CE this word appears in writing, meaning:
"the exercise of authority in vindication of right by assigning reward or punishment,"
from Old French: justise, from Latin, justitia "righteousness, equity," from justus "upright, just".
- The Old French word had widespread senses, including "uprightness, equity, vindication of right, court of justice, judge."
- The word began to be used in England around 1200 as a title for a judicial officer.
- The meaning "the administration of law" is from 1303as in Justice of the peace first attested to in 1320.
- In the Mercian hymns, Latin, justitia is glossed by Old English rehtwisnisse, meaning right witness.
The ideal that justice is "blind" has a curious and not entirely negative concept in one sense that it arises from a Greek poetic and theatrical tradition where those members of society who could see the future are also blind. These blind soothsayers, so it was traditional to believe, tell the truth and hence are "right witnesses" to the event they have foretold.
The argument can be made that weight is also felt and not necessarily perceived by vision since the eyes may be deceived by
A) what we think we saw, and
B) optical illusions were understood as common enough to interfere with our correct witnessing of events.
assize
1303 (attested from 1164 in Anglo-Latin.), from Old French: asise "session," from feminine, past participle of asseoir "to cause to sit," from Latin: assidere (see assess).Originally "all legal proceedings of the nature of inquests or recognitions;" hence sessions held periodically in each English county to administer civil and criminal justice.
equity
c.1315, from Old French: equite, from Latin: æquitatem (nom. æquitas) "equality, conformity, symmetry, fairness," from æquus "even, just, equal."
As the name of a system of law, 1591, from Roman naturalis æquitas, the general principles of justice which corrected or supplemented the legal codes.
advocate
1340, "one whose profession is to plead cases in a court of justice," a technical term from Roman law, from Old French: avocat, from Latin: advocatus, originally the past participle of advocare "to call" (as witness or advisor) from ad- "to" + vocare "call," related to vocem (see voice).
The verb is first attested 1641.
Advocates Close in Edinburgh, Scotland.
basilica
1541, from Latin: basilica "building of a court of justice," and, by extension, the common custom in Christian Rome to construct a church built on the plan of one of the Roman civic structures. A Basilica was a Roman civic building something like a town or city hall. The term is taken from Greek: (stoa) basilike meaning "royal (portal)," the portico of the archon basileus, who was the official charged with having had to dispense justice in Athens, from basileus "king" (see basil).
In Rome, the term was initially transferred and applied specifically to the seven principal churches founded by the Emperor Constantine.
dharma
1796, in secular sense, "caste custom, right behavior;" in Buddhism and Hinduism, "moral law," from Sanskrit: "law, right, justice," related to dharayati "holds," and cognate with Latin: firmus, all derived from Proto-Indo-European root words, or the base word *dher- meaning "to hold, support".
Emperor Constantine, who changed the world by his adult conversion to Christian faith from and his subsequent decree making this the official religion of the Roman Empire [324 CE] from 312-330 CE.
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