THOMAS HOBBES Y LA FUNCIÓN DE LOS JUECES

[...]we first set forth the controversy with Coke on the role of the judges regarding the law (I). [...]we present what the judge's role according to Hobbes is (II and III), his institutional position (IV), and finally, we will pose (V) that his controversy with Coke refers to the very concept of law rather than to the role of the judge. Coke makes it,) an Artificiall perfection of Reason, gotten by long study, observation, and experience', (as his was.) For it is possible long study may encrease, and confirm erroneous Sentences: and where men build on false grounds, the more they build, the greater is the ruine: and of those that study, and observe with equall time, and diligence, the reasons and resolutions are, and must remain, discordant: and therefore it is not that 'Jurisprudentia', or wisedome of subordinate Judges; but the Reason of this our Artificiall Man the Common-wealth, and his Command, that maketh Law: and the Common-wealth being in their Representative but one Person, there cannot easily arise any contradiction in the Lawes; and where they doth, the same Reason is able, by interpretation or alteration, to take it away": Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012) XXVI, 422 (en adelante, "L"; se citará indicando primero el capítulo y luego la página en la que se encuentra el texto; así, "L XXVI, 422", significa que el texto citado se encuentra en el capítulo XXVI, página 422 de la edición ocupada). 34 Sin embargo, esto no debe entenderse, como lo hace Campagna, como si en ausencia de un pronunciamiento judicial el derecho no fuese vinculante: "But if the nature of law consists in the authentic interpretation of the legislator's meaning, and if the judge's sentence constitutes, or is always to be taken as constituting the authentic interpretation of the legislator's meaning, it is the judge who constitutes law as an obligatory command out of the words of the sovereign.