This maxim promotes the conception that the law must be followed precisely (blindly), regardless of any extenuating circumstances including finding out that the convicted person is innocent. It is apparently based on a situation presented by Seneca, "The Younger" (Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4 B.C.-A.D. 65), who tells us about a man who was supposed to be hanged for murder, but he was sent by the executioner to a government official by the name of Piso because the purported victim appeared in public alive.

Piso would not change the sentence of death. Instead, he ordered all three men to be hanged: the convicted criminal because the sentence had been passed, the executioner because he was derelict in his duty by not going ahead with the execution, and the assumed victim because he was considered the cause of the death of other two innocent men.