The Treatise on Laws: (Decretum DD. 1-20)

The first twenty distinctions, translated here, comprise a treatise on law in general and contain a discussion of the nature of law, voluntary action, and the power of popes, bishops, and secular authorities. Accompanying the translation of the distinctions is a translation of the so-called ordinary gloss, a commentary on the distinctions that took its final form in the thirteenth century and was usually found around the margin texts of the 'Decretum.'