Restitution and Corrective Justice in the Aristotelian Scholastic Tradition. The Contribution of Francisco Suárez (1548-1617)

This article examines the concept of corrective justice in the Aristotelian Scholastic tradition, with a particular focus on the philosophy of Francisco Suarez. Despite the value of restitution in classical legal theory, corrective justice cannot be defined as a merely restorative virtue. The Aristotelian Scholastic tradition assigns to it other important objectives, such as the establishment of the equivalence in contractual benefits, the fulfillment of agreements in good faith, and the respect for other people's rights. Suarez, unlike the rest of the scholastics, has examined with great attention the nonrestitutive aspect of the commutative justice. In his proposal, corrective justice fulfills an institutive and directive function in private dealings. According to Suarez, a virtue with those characteristics doubtlessly exceeds the ambit of reparation.