There is one class of personal rights which ought in logical strictness to be dealt with in the law of status, but is commonly and more conveniently considered elsewhere—those rights, namely, which are called natural, because they belong to all men from their birth, instead of being subsequently acquired: for example, the rights of life, liberty, reputation, and freedom from bodily harm. These are personal rights and not proprietary; they constitute part of a man’s status, not part of his estate; yet we seldom find them set forth in the law of status.[[523]] The reason is that such rights, being natural and not acquired, call for no consideration, except in respect of their violation. They are adequately dealt with, therefore, under the head of civil and criminal wrongs. The exposition of the law of libel, for example, which is contained in the law of torts, involves already the proposition that a man has a right to his reputation; and there is no occasion, therefore, for a bald statement to that effect in the later law of status.
SUMMARY.
THE DIVISIONS OF THE LAW.
| I. Introduction. | A. Sources of the Law. | ||||
| B. Interpretation and Definitions. | |||||
| C. Private International Law. | |||||
| D. Miscellaneous Introductory Principles. | |||||
| II. Private Law | Civil Law | Substantive | Property | 1. Corporeal Property | Land. |
| Chattels. | |||||
| 2. Immaterial Property | Patents | ||||
| Trade-marks, &c. | |||||
| 3. Encumbrances | Leases. | ||||
| Servitudes. | |||||
| Trusts. | |||||
| Securities, &c. | |||||
| 4. Succession | Testamentary. | ||||
| Intestate. | |||||
| Obligations | 1. Contracts | General Part. | |||
| Special Part. | |||||
| 2. Torts | General Part, | ||||
| Special Part. | |||||
| 3. Miscellaneous Obligations. | |||||
| 4. Insolvency. | |||||
| 5. Companies. | |||||
| Status | Domestic Status | Marriage. | |||
| Parentage. | |||||
| Guardianship. | |||||
| Extra-domestic | Infants. | ||||
| Married women. | |||||
| Lunatics. | |||||
| Aliens. | |||||
| Convicts, &c. | |||||
| Procedure | Practice. | ||||
| Evidence. | |||||
| Criminal Law | Substantive | General Part. | |||
| Special Part. | |||||
| Procedure. | |||||
| III. Public Law | Constitutional Law. | ||||
| Administrative Law. | |||||
APPENDIX V.
THE LITERATURE OF JURISPRUDENCE.
The following list is intended to serve partly by way of explanation of the references contained in the text and notes, and partly as a guide to the literature of the subject. Nothing, however, is here attempted save a selection of the more important works which bear with more or less directness upon the abstract theory of the law. Many of them are primarily ethical or political, rather than legal, and of those which are strictly legal, many are devoted to some special branch of law rather than to general theory. But all of them are relevant, in whole or in part, to the subject-matter of this work. The editions mentioned are those to which the references in the text and notes relate, and are not invariably the latest.
Ahrens.—Cours de Droit Naturel, ou de Philosophie du Droit. 8th ed. 1892, Paris. (A good example of the modern Continental literature of Natural Law.)
Amos.—The Science of Jurisprudence, 1872. The Science of Law, 6th ed. 1885.
Anson, Sir W. R.—Principles of the English Law of Contract. 13th ed. 1912.
Aquinas, St. Thomas.—Tractatus de Legibus and Tractatus de Justitia et Jure, included in his Summa Theologiae.
(The scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages included within its scope the more abstract portions of juridical science, and the legal and ethical doctrines of the schoolmen found their most authoritative expression in the above-mentioned work of Aquinas in the thirteenth century.)