  Talk of human flourishing’s or wellbeing’s aspects, and of principles of practical reason, should not be allowed to distract attention from an important truth, implicit both in classical Greek and Roman philosophical and juristic treatments of justice and in modern juristic attributions of human rights. Indeed, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) links the two traditions of discourse by placing at the head of its articulation of human rights the core (“all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”) of the Roman juristic saying (Institutes 1.2.2) that “by nature, from the outset, all human beings were born free and equal,” a saying about iustitia, justice as a ground and standard for ius, law. The same Roman law texts, promulgated as permanent law by Justinian 533–535 AD, state more than once that law’s point (its “final” causa, explanatory reason) is the human persons for whose sake it is made, that is, all human persons until the time when the ius gentium, the common law of peoples, was distorted by wars and slavery. Law, fit to take a directive place in practical reasoning towards morally sound judgment, is for the sake of human persons: all the members of the community regulated by that law and all other persons within that law’s ambit.