What are Maxims of Law?
Maxims are general principles admitted in court without proof.
Latin is a dead language whose definitions do not change.
Maxims of law are admitted in all courts. They are permanent irrevocable laws of all mankind. They were valid 2000 years ago and valid today.
They are enforceable in all courts at all times. This is why the citizen cannot complain. This is why the due process of law has a different meaning in the 14th Amendment than the 5th Amendment.
Ignorantia juris quod quisque tenetur scire, neminem excusat. Ignorance of a law, which every one is bound to know, excuses no man. In other words, you can ignore the law, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring the law.
Here is Black’s Law Dictionary definition:
According to Wikipedia:
“The attitude of early English commentators towards the maximal of the law was one of unmingled adulation. In Thomas Hobbes, Doctor and Student (p. 26), they are described as of the same strength and effect in the law as statutes. Not only, observes Francis Bacon in the preface to his collection of maxims: The use of maxims will be “in deciding doubt and helping soundness of judgment, but, further, in gracing argument, in correcting unprofitable subtlety, and reducing the same to a more sound and substantial sense of law, in reclaiming vulgar errors, and, generally, in the amendment in some measure of the very nature and complexion of the whole law”.[1][2]”
[1]”The Maxims of the Law” is combined with a tract entitled The Use of the Common Law, for preservation of our Persons, goods, and good Names in a book entitled The Elements of the Common Lawes of England.
[2] “The Elements of the Common Lawes of England”. The Works of Francis Bacon. Murphy. 1887. p. 221.