CEVAP:

Ideas taken by the medieval thinkers from the law texts might be listed thus:

1. A distinction among kinds of laws, namely natural law (ius naturale), law of nations (ius gentium), and civil law (i.e., the law of a particular community).

2. A notion of rights, including natural rights (currently, “human rights”), which may be attributed to individuals. It is noteworthy that the language of rights, without which many people these days would not know how to talk about politics, did not fully enter political philosophy until the fourteenth century as a borrowing from the law,

3. “The one liberty of all men”, i.e., the idea that human beings are basically equal and that slavery is contrary to natural law, though in accordance with the law of nations,

4. The origin of property: according to some Roman law texts, property originated by natural law; according to others by the law of nations. According to canon law, property exists by human law (which includes the law of nations and the civil law); compare Augustine’s statement that property exists by the laws of the emperors,

5. The doctrine that the source of political authority is the people, who have, however, entrusted their power to the emperor or some other ruler,

6. The doctrine that either the pope or emperor (or both) has a “fullness of power”,

7. The doctrine that natural law permits an individual to resist force by force; which would provide a premise for arguments for the right to disobey a tyrannical government, used later by John Locke (1632-1704),

8. A distinction between Church and Statemore exactly, between the priesthood and the power of the emperor, each independent in its own sphere, though the priesthood has the higher function.