"The more laws, the less justice"
About this Quote
A civilization that can only behave when it’s threatened with a penalty is already halfway broken. Cicero’s line cuts like that: not an anarchist howl against order, but a Roman lawyer’s grim diagnosis that legal abundance often signals moral scarcity.
The intent is surgical. Cicero is warning that law can become a substitute for justice rather than its instrument. When statutes multiply, it’s usually because power has lost legitimacy and tries to buy it back with procedure. Rome in Cicero’s lifetime was a machine of emergency decrees, exceptional commissions, and factional “reforms” drafted to crush rivals. More rules didn’t produce more fairness; they produced more opportunities to weaponize technicalities, to delay, to exempt the well-connected, to punish the inconvenient. A dense legal code becomes a thicket where the strong hire guides and the weak get lost.
The subtext is even sharper: justice is not identical with legality. Cicero, steeped in Stoic-inflected natural law, treats justice as a moral order that precedes the state. Laws are supposed to translate that order into practice. When they proliferate, it suggests the translation is failing - either because lawmakers are corrupt, citizens distrust institutions, or leaders are replacing shared norms with coercion.
Why it works rhetorically is its inversion of modern assumptions. We’re trained to equate “more regulation” with “more protection.” Cicero flips that comfort into suspicion: if you need endless rules, maybe you’ve stopped believing people deserve fairness without being managed.
The intent is surgical. Cicero is warning that law can become a substitute for justice rather than its instrument. When statutes multiply, it’s usually because power has lost legitimacy and tries to buy it back with procedure. Rome in Cicero’s lifetime was a machine of emergency decrees, exceptional commissions, and factional “reforms” drafted to crush rivals. More rules didn’t produce more fairness; they produced more opportunities to weaponize technicalities, to delay, to exempt the well-connected, to punish the inconvenient. A dense legal code becomes a thicket where the strong hire guides and the weak get lost.
The subtext is even sharper: justice is not identical with legality. Cicero, steeped in Stoic-inflected natural law, treats justice as a moral order that precedes the state. Laws are supposed to translate that order into practice. When they proliferate, it suggests the translation is failing - either because lawmakers are corrupt, citizens distrust institutions, or leaders are replacing shared norms with coercion.
Why it works rhetorically is its inversion of modern assumptions. We’re trained to equate “more regulation” with “more protection.” Cicero flips that comfort into suspicion: if you need endless rules, maybe you’ve stopped believing people deserve fairness without being managed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: Ethics' 2006 Ed. (the Philosophical Discipline of Action) (E. Babor, 2006) modern compilationISBN: 9789712343865 · ID: qzETCc5fhkkC
Evidence: ... Cicero once said : " The more laws , the less justice . " True enough , justice can only be gauged upon in the context of law . In order to effect justice , there should be legal and moral means that have to be resorted . This makes Cicero ... Other candidates (1) Cicero (Cicero) compilation66.7% he law this it is that gave rise to the now familiar saw more law less justice b |
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