When Hegel speaks about law in abstract, he hardly mentions Roman law: given that Hegel knew about the latter, why does he not speak more about it? To clarify this question we must turn to the Greek term dike and its Latin counterpart, ius. From this we are alerted to how it is that, following the initiative of Kant, Hegel converts freedom into a supreme principle and constructs his own conception of law based on his concept of the spirit.