Determination of law in Domingo de Soto and Francisco Suárez

The problem of derivatio per modum determinationis is among the main subject matters of the Scholastic legal science. According to Thomas Acquinas, determination should be construed as one of the ways in which human law is derived from natural law. Such hermeneutic exercise, which resembles the tasks of an artisan that has been entrusted the construction of a house, turns, among the Neo-Scholastic authors of the 16th Century, into the main focus of attention of studies of nature and need of human law. This article examines this issue in Domingo de Soto and Francisco Suárez.