Oath

1 According to White, ‘[o]aths have been found wherever human society exists’; thus, it is safe to say that ‘“swearing”’ in some form is a natural and universal custom’ (at 378). The universal use of oaths in a legal context has been attributed to two conflicting factors: first, their close connection to human’s natural predisposition for truth, as a transcendent value and a personal virtue, and second the misdirected and egoistic self-interest that is sometimes opposed to the truth (Milhizer 4–5). The matter has been eloquently described by St Thomas Aquinas when...