According to Salmond "law is the body of principles, which are recognized and applied by the State in the administration of justice. The purpose of law is the deliverance of justice to the people." Discuss.

According to Salmond, law is the body of principles which are recognized and applied by the state in the administration of justice. His other definition said that law consists of a set of rules recognized and acted on in courts of justice. 'Law' in this definition is used in its abstract sense. The constituent elements of which the law is made up are not laws but rules of law or legal principles. Since law was defined by a reference to the administration of justice, it needs to be understood as well. Salmond says that human experience has made it clear that some form of compulsion is required to maintain justice. It is in the nature of things to have conflict, partly real, partly apparent, between the interests of man and man, and between those of individuals and those of society at large; and men cannot be left to do what they believe is right in their own eyes. Therefore, if a just society is to be maintained, it is necessary to add compulsion so as to complement to walk on the desired path. Hence, there exists various regulative or coercive systems, the purpose of which is the upholding and enforcement of right and justice by some instrument of external constraint. One of the most important of such systems is the administration of justice by the state. The administration of justice may therefore be defined as the maintenance of right within a political community by means of physical force of the state. Another is the control exercised over men by the opinion of the society in which they live. Censure, ridicule, contempt are the sanctions by which society (as opposed to the state) enforces the rules of morality. Salmond argued that the administration of justice was the primary task of a state and the laws were made to achieve that objective. Administration of justice was thus antecedent to the laws. Laws thus are secondary, accidental, unessential. Law consists of the pre-established and authoritative rules which judges apply in the administration of justice, to the exclusion of their own free will and discretion. Salmond further said that the administration of justice is perfectly possible without laws though such a system is not desirable. A court with an unfettered discretion in the absence of laws is capable of delivering justice if guided by equity and good conscience. Salmond says that development and maturity of a legal system consists in the progressive substitution of rigid pre-established principles for individual judgment, and to a very large extent these principles grow up spontaneously within the courts themselves. That great aggregate of rules which constitutes a developed legal system, is not a condition precedent of the administration of justice but a product of fit. Gradually from various sources- precedent, custom, statute-there is a collected body of fixed principles which the courts apply to the exclusion of their private judgment. Justice becomes increasingly justice according to law, and courts of justice become increasingly courts of law.