Civil and criminal law are each divisible into two branches, namely substantive law and the law of procedure, a distinction the nature of which has already been sufficiently considered.
5. Divisions of the Substantive Civil Law.
The substantive civil law may be conveniently divided, by reference to the nature of the rights with which it is concerned, into three great branches, namely the law of property, the law of obligations, and the law of status. The first deals with proprietary rights in rem, the second with proprietary rights in personam, and the third with personal as opposed to proprietary rights.
6. The Law of Property.
Although the distinction between the law of property and that of obligations is a fundamental one, which must be recognised in any orderly scheme of classification, there is a great part of the substantive civil law which is common to both of these branches of it. Thus the law of inheritance or succession concerns all kinds of proprietary rights whether in rem or in personam. So also with the law of trusts and that of securities. In general the most convenient method of dealing with these common elements is to consider them once for all in the law of property, thus confining the law of obligations to those rules which are peculiar to obligations: just as the elements common to civil and criminal law are dealt with in the civil law, and those common to private and public law in private law.
The law of property is divisible into the following chief branches: (1) the law of corporeal property, namely the ownership of land and chattels; (2) the law of immaterial objects of property, such as patents, trade-marks, and copyrights; (3) the law of encumbrances or jura in re aliena, such as tenancies, servitudes, trusts, and securities; (4) the law of testamentary and intestate succession.
7. The Law of Obligations.
The law of obligations comprises the law of contracts, the law of torts, and the law of those miscellaneous obligations which are neither contractual nor delictal. It may be convenient to consider under the same head the law of insolvency, inasmuch as the essential significance of insolvency is to be found in its operation as a method of discharging debts and liabilities. Alternatively, however, this branch of law may be included in the law of property, inasmuch as it deals with one mode of divesting proprietary rights in general. In the law of obligations is also to be classed the law of companies, this being essentially a development of the law of the contract of partnership. Under the head of companies are to be comprised all forms of contractual incorporation, all other bodies corporate pertaining either to public law or to special departments of private law with which they are exclusively concerned. The general doctrine as to corporations is to be found in the introductory department of the law.
8. The Law of Status.
The law of status is divisible into two branches dealing respectively with domestic and extra-domestic status. The first of these is the law of family relations, and deals with the nature, acquisition, and loss of all those personal rights, duties, liabilities, and disabilities which are involved in domestic relationship. It falls into three divisions, concerned respectively with marriage, parentage, and guardianship. The second branch of the law of status is concerned with all the personal rights, duties, liabilities, and disabilities, which are external to the law of the family. It deals, for example, with the personal status of minors (in relation to others than their parents), of married women (in relation to others than their husbands and children), of lunatics, aliens, convicts, and any other classes of persons whose personal condition is sufficiently characteristic to call for separate consideration.[[522]]