AI from https://chatgpt.com/: This passage presents Michel Villey’s critique of the Spanish Scholastics as a turning point in the history of law , especially in the transition from an objective conception of jus to the modern conception of subjective rights . Villey’s basic thesis For Villey, the classical Roman and Aristotelian-Thomist understanding of law is fundamentally objective . Jus is “what is just” ( id quod justum est ). Justice consists in giving each person his due ( suum cuique tribuere ). The jurist or judge determines the proper proportion or relationship between persons, goods, offices, and obligations. Thus, law is primarily concerned with a just order between persons and things , rather than with an individual's personal power to act. In simplified form: Classical law: What is the just thing that belongs to each person? Villey contrasts this with the later subjective conception: Modern rights: What power, liberty, or claim does the individual po...
School of Salamanca, such as Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez, who, despite affirming their fidelity to the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, ended up following the lead of the modern theologians in favour of a subjective conception of law101 . Villey is explicit about this: First, I think it's a legend that the Scholastics were faithful to St Thomas. [...] In any case, regarding the subject of law or legal theory, I have not been able to find in Spanish Scholasticism the doctrine of St Thomas
https://www.giuseppetosi.com.br/arquivos/fill/4c2bbebeee02df2b4c9104f93f66f275_interpretations_of_the_controversy_over_the_conquest_of_america.pdf#:~:text=Some%20defend%20the%20thesis%20that%20the%20scholastics,not%20develop%20a%20doctrine%20of%20subjective%20rights Michel Villey and the "deformation" of the philosophy of law by the Spanish scholastics Michel Villey (1914-1988) was one of the greatest French legal philosophers of the 20th century. Catholic, conservative, brilliant and polemical in his always very clear and profound arguments. He wrote several fundamental works on the history and theory of law, many of which have been translated in Brazil96. We will focus on just one aspect of his thought, which is central and recurrent throughout his work, namely his criticism of what he calls the "deformation" of law caused by the theory of subjective rights, which underpins modern human rights. This deformation97 of law occurred in the passage "from law (jus)...