LEWDNESS. That form of immorality which has relation to sexual impurity. U. S. v. Males, 51 Fed. 41. See LASCIVIOUSNESS ; OBSCENITY ; INDECENCY.
LEX (Lat.). In the Civil Law. A rule of law which magistrates and people had agreed upon by means of a solemn declaration of consensus. Sohm, Inst. R. L. 28.
Its two main meanings are said to be: A written law ; and a stated or written con dition or understanding proposed and ac cepted. Nettleship, Lexicog.
In the later empire, which dates from the fourth century, there were two groups of the sources of the law, jus (q. v.), 4. e. the old traditional law, and leges which had sprung from imperial legislation. Jus was based upon the law of the Twelve Tables, plebiscite, senates-cons ulta, the praetorian edict, and the ordinances of the earlier emperors, which, partly owing to their language and partly on account of the bald sententiousness, and the pregnant phraseology in which they were couched, came to be mainly used, both by the prtetor and by the parties, through the classic lit erature where their results were set forth and worked out. This resulted in identi fying Pus with jurist-made law, and on the edict of the Law of Citations (q. v.) by Valentinian III., the distinction between Pus and lee was practically lost. See Inst. 1. 2. 3 ; Sohm, Inst. It. L. 82; Jus SCRIPTA.
In England there was no careful dis crimination between jus, and lee, and con suetudo, although they Fere not, in all con texts, used with exactly similar meaning. Leges was sometimes applied by both Glan ville and Bracton to the unwritten laws of England, and although Bracton contrasts consisetudo with lee, there was no general definite theory as to the relation between enacted and unenacted law—the relation be tween law and custom, and the relation be tween law as it was and law as it ought to be. The king's justices claimed a certain
power of improving the law, but they might not change the law, and the king might is sue new writs without the consent of a national assembly, but not where such writs were contrary to the law. Jus commune was used by the canonists to distinguish the gen eral and ordinary law of the universal church from any rules peculiar to a particu lar national or provincial church, and from the papal privilegia, and the phrase was also used in the dialogue on the Exchequer, but it was not until the time of Edward I. that it was superseded by lee communbs, or that the common law could be contrasted with the statute law, the royal prerogative or local custom. 1 Poll. & Maitl. 154.
Lee is used in a purely juridical sense, law, and not also right; while jus has an ethical as well as a juridical meaning, not only law, but right. 15 L. Q. R. 367 (by Sal mond). Lex is usually concrete, while Pus is abstract. Pollock, First Book of Jurispr. 14-18. In English we have no term which combines the legal and ethical meanings, as do jus and its French equivalent, droit. id.
Among the following titles will be found many of the leges (plebiscita) and senates consulta; a conspectus of the principal laws that have come down to us froth the Empire, with particular titles or definite authorship, may be found in Hunter, Rom. Law 61.