TITLE VIII. OF PERSONS WHO MAY, AND WHO MAY NOT ALIENATE
It sometimes happens that an owner cannot alienate, and that a nonowner can. Thus the alienation of dowry land by the husband, without the consent of the wife, is prohibited by the lex Iulia, although, since it has been given to him as dowry, he is its owner. We, however, have amended the lex Iulia, and thus introduced an improvement; for that statute applied only to land in Italy, and though it prohibited a mortgage of the land even with the wife's consent, it forbade it to be alienated only without her concurrence. To correct these two defects we have forbidden mortgages as well as alienations of dowry land even when it is situated in the provinces, so that such land can now be dealt with in neither of these ways, even if the wife concurs, lest the weakness of the female sex should be used as a means to the wasting of their property.
1 Conversely, a pledgee, in pursuance of his agreement, may alienate the pledge, though not its owner; this, however, may seem to rest on the assent of the pledgor given at the inception of the contract, in which it was agreed that the pledgee should have a power of sale in default of repayment. But in order that creditors may not be hindered from pursuing their lawful rights, or debtors be deemed to be overlightly deprived of their property, provisions have been inserted in our constitution and a definite procedure established for the sale of pledges, by which the interests of both creditors and debtors have been abundantly guarded.
2 We must next observe that no pupil of either sex can alienate anything without his or her guardian's authority. Consequently, if a pupil attempts to lend money without such authority, no property passes, and he does not impose a contractual obligation; hence the money, if it exists, can be recovered by real action. If the money which he attempted to lend has been spent in good faith by the wouldbe borrower, it can be sued for by the personal action called condiction; if it has been fraudulently spent, the pupil can sue by personal action for its production. On the other hand, things can be validly conveyed to pupils of either sex without the guardian's authority; accordingly, if a debtor wishes to pay a pupil, he must obtain the sanction of the guardian to the transaction, else he will not be released. In a constitution which we issued to the advocates of Caesarea at the instance of the distinguished Tribonian, quaestor of our most sacred palace, it has with the clearest reason been enacted, that the debtor of a pupil may safely pay a guardian or curator by having first obtained permission by the order of a judge, for which no fee is to be payable: and if the judge makes the order, and the debtor in pursuance thereof makes payment, he is completely protected by this form of discharge. Supposing, however, that the form of payment be other than that which we have fixed, and that the pupil, though he still has the money in his possession, or has been otherwise enriched by it, attempts to recover the debt by action, he can be repelled by the plea of fraud. If on the other hand he has squandered the money or had it stolen from him, the plea of fraud will not avail the debtor, who will be condemned to pay again, as a penalty for having carelessly paid without the guardian's authority, and not in accordance with our regulation. Pupils of either sex cannot validly satisfy a debt without their guardian's authority, because the money paid does not become the creditor's property; the principle being that no pupil is capable of alienation without his guardian's sanction.