Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum - Modern Origins

Modern Origins

The exact phrase as used for approval of justice at all cost – usually seen in a positive sense – appears to originate in modern jurisprudence. In English law, William Watson in “Ten Quodlibetical Quotations Concerning Religion and State” (1601) “You go against that general maxim in the laws, which is ‘Fiat justitia et ruant coeli.’” This is its first known appearance in English literature.

The maxim was used by William Prynne in “Fresh Discovery of Prodigious Wandering New-Blazing Stars” (1646), by Nathaniel Ward in “Simple Cobbler of Agawam” (1647), and frequently thereafter, but it was given its widest celebrity by William Murray, 1st Baron Mansfield's decision in 1770 on the case concerning the outlawry of John Wilkes (and not, as is commonly believed, in Somersett's Case, the 1772 case concerning the legality of slavery in England).

The maxim is given in various forms:

• “Fiat justitia et ruant coeli” (Watson);
• “Fiat justitia et coelum ruat” (John Manningham, Diary, 11 April 1603);
• “Fiat justitia, ruat coelum” (Lord Mansfield).