Talk:Fiat justitia et pereat mundus

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Note on sources: This refers to deWP, but no WP is a source for another, or we'd go round in circles. Now, deWP gives a source, [1], which is a personal website, and not as such acceptable in enWP (or in deWP--they list it correctly thee just as an external link). This is apparently the source for the translations into German. The site gives it according to a book by Detlef Liebs, Professor am Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und geschichtliche Rechtsvergleichung der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau. Lateinische Rechtsregeln und Rechtssprichwörter. München: C.H.Beck, 1998. Gebunden, 300 Seiten. this would be an acceptable source, if cited directly. It's a standard dictionary, in many law libraries in the US also. But it is authority for the translation into English. And as I read the excepts on the site, it has two opposite meanings:the positive and the negative. I'd always known it as positive: Do justice,no matter what the consequences. that it had a negative meaning is new to me; according to the website, it's based on Kleist's novel Michael Kohlhaas. In any event "It may happen justice and the world may decay." is not idiomatic English, regardless of the interpretation.

I've been reading Charles Sumner's magnificent oration [[2]], since its in Google Books, which gives the sources as seen from the early 19th century.

I think some more modern scholarship is needed. DGG (talk) 18:50, 31 December 2007 (UTC)