Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Joints" to "Justinian I." / Volume 15, Slice 5

by Various

So far as the mere size of the community is concerned, there is no difficulty in applying the Austinian theory. In postulating a considerably numerous community Austin was thinking evidently of small isolated groups which could not without provoking a sense of the ridiculous be termed nations. Two or three families, let us suppose, occupying a small island, totally disconnected with any great power, would not claim to be and would not be treated as an independent political community. But it does not follow that Austin would have regarded the village communities spoken of by Maine in the same light. Here we have a great community, consisting of a vast number of small communities, each independent of the other, and disconnected with all the others, so far as the administration of anything like law is concerned. Suppose in each case that the headman or council takes his orders from Runjeet Singh, and enforces them, each in his own sphere, relying as the last resort on the force at the disposal of the suzerain. The mere size of the separate communities would make no sort of difference to Austin’s theory. He would probably regard the empire of Runjeet Singh as divided into small districts—an assumption which inverts no doubt the true historical order, the smaller group being generally more ancient than the larger. But provided that the other conditions prevail, the mere fact that the law is administered by local tribunals for minute areas should make no difference to the theory. The case described by Maine is that of the undoubted possession of supreme power by a sovereign, coupled with the total absence of any attempt on his part to originate a law. That no doubt is, as we are told by the same authority, “the type of all Oriental communities in their native state during their rare intervals of peace and order.” The empire was in the main in each case a tax-gathering empire. The unalterable law of the Medes and Persians was not a law at all but an occasional command. So again Maine puts his position clearly in the following sentences: “The Athenian assembly made true laws for residents on Attic territory, but the dominion of Athens over her subject cities and islands was clearly a tax-taking as distinguished from a legislating empire.” Maine, it will be observed, does not say that the sovereign assembly did not command the laws in the subject islands—only that it did not legislate.

In the same category may be placed without much substantial difference all the societies that have ever existed on the face of the earth previous to the point at which legislation becomes active. Maine is undoubtedly right in connecting the theories of Bentham and Austin with the overwhelming activity of legislatures in modern times. And formal legislation, as he elsewhere shows, comes late in the history of most legal systems. Law is generated in other ways, which seem irreconcilable with anything like legislation. Not only the tax-gathering emperors of the East, indifferent to the condition of their subjects, but even actively benevolent governments have up to a certain point left the law to grow by other means than formal enactments. What is ex facie more opposed to the idea of a sovereign’s commands than the conception of schools of law? Does it not “sting us with a sense of the ridiculous” to hear principles which are the outcome of long debates between Proculians and Sabinians described as commands of the emperor? How is sectarianism in law possible if the sovereign’s command is really all that is meant by a law? No mental attitude is more common than that which regards law as a natural product—discoverable by a diligent investigator, much in the same way as the facts of science or the principles of mathematics. The introductory portions of Justinian’s Institutes are certainly written from this point of view, which may also be described without much unfairness as the point of view of German jurisprudence. And yet the English jurist who accepts Austin’s postulate as true for the English system of our own day would have no difficulty in applying it to German or Roman law generated under the influence of such ideas as these.

Again, referring to the instance of Runjeet Singh, Sir H. Maine says no doubt rightly that “he never did or could have dreamed of changing the civil rules under which his subjects lived. Probably he was as strong a believer in the independent obligatory force of such rules as the elders themselves who applied them.” That too might be said with truth of states to which the application of Austin’s system would be far from difficult. The sovereign body or person enforcing the rules by all the ordinary methods of justice might conceivably believe that the rules which he enforced had an obligatory authority of their own, just as most lawyers at one time, and possibly some lawyers now, believe in the natural obligatoriness, independently of courts or parliaments, of portions of the law of England. But nevertheless, whatever ideas the sovereign or his delegates might entertain as to “the independent obligatory force” of the rules which they enforce, the fact that they do enforce them distinguishes them from all other rules. Austin seizes upon this peculiarity and fixes it as the determining characteristic of positive law. When the rule is enforced by a sovereign authority as he defines it, it is his command, even if he should never so regard it himself, or should suppose himself to be unable to alter it in a single particular.

It may be instructive to add to these examples of dubious cases one taken from what is called ecclesiastical law. In so far as this has not been adopted and enforced by the state, it would, on Austin’s theory, be, not positive law, but either positive morality or possibly a portion of the Divine law. No jurist would deny that there is an essential difference between so much of ecclesiastical law as is adopted by the state and all the rest of it, and that for scientific purposes this distinction ought to be recognized. How near this kind of law approaches to the positive or political law may be seen from the sanctions on which it depended. “The theory of penitential discipline was this: that the church was an organized body with an outward and visible form of government; that all who were outside her boundaries were outside the means of divine grace; that she had a command laid upon her, and authority given to her, to gather men into her fellowship by the ceremony of baptism, but, as some of those who were admitted proved unworthy of their calling, she also had the right by the power of the keys to deprive them temporarily or absolutely of the privilege of communion with her, and on their amendment to restore them once more to church membership. On this power of exclusion and restoration was founded the system of ecclesiastical discipline. It was a purely spiritual jurisdiction. It obtained its hold over the minds of men from the belief, universal in the Catholic church of the early ages, that he who was expelled from her pale was expelled also from the way of salvation, and that the sentence which was pronounced by God’s church on earth was ratified by Him in heaven.” (Smith’s Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, art. “Penitence,” p. 1587.)

These laws are not the laws of the jurists, though they resemble them closely in many points—indeed in all points except that of the sanction by which they are enforced. It is a spiritual not a political sanction. The force which lies behind them is not that of the sovereign or the state. When physical force is used to compel obedience to the laws of the church they become positive laws. But so long as the belief in future punishments or the fear of the purely spiritual punishments of the church is sufficient to procure obedience to them, they are to be regarded as commands, not by the state, but by the church. That difference Austin makes essential. In rejecting spiritual laws from the field of positive law his example would be followed by jurists who would nevertheless include other laws, not ecclesiastical in purpose, but enforced by very similar methods.

Austin’s theory in the end comes to this, that true laws are in all cases obeyed in consequence of the application of regulated physical force by some portion of the community. That is a fair paraphrase of the position that laws are the commands of the sovereign, and is perhaps less objectionable inasmuch as it does not imply or suggest anything about the forms in which laws are enunciated. All rules, customs, practices and laws—or by whatever name these uniformities of human conduct may be called—have either this kind of force at their back or they have not. Is it worth while to make this difference the basis of a scientific system or not? Apparently it is. If it were a question of distinguishing between the law of the law courts and the laws of fashion no one would hesitate. Why should laws or rules having no support from any political authority be termed laws positive merely because there are no other rules in the society having such support?

The question may perhaps be summed up as follows. Austin’s definitions are in strict accordance with the facts of government in civilized states; and, as it is put by Maine, certain assumptions or postulates having been made, the great majority of Austin’s positions follow as of course or by ordinary logical process. But at the other extreme end of the scale of civilization are societies to which Austin himself refuses to apply his system, and where, it would be conceded on all sides, there is neither political community nor sovereign nor law—none of the facts which jurisprudence assumes to exist. There is an intermediate stage of society in which, while the rules of conduct might and generally would be spoken of as laws, it is difficult to trace the connexion between them and the sovereign authority whose existence is necessary to Austin’s system. Are such societies to be thrown out of account in analytical jurisprudence, or is Austin’s system to be regarded as only a partial explanation of the field of true law, and his definitions good only for the laws of a portion of the world? The true answer to this question appears to be that when the rules in any given case are habitually enforced by physical penalties, administered by a determinate person or portion of the community, they should be regarded as positive laws and the appropriate subject matter of jurisprudence. Rules which are not so enforced, but are enforced in any other way, whether by what is called public opinion, or spiritual apprehensions, or natural instinct, are rightly excluded from that subject matter. In all stages of society, savage or civilized, a large body of rules of conduct, habitually obeyed, are nevertheless not enforced by any state sanction of any kind. Austin’s method assimilates such rules in primitive society, where they subserve the same purpose as positive laws in an advanced society, not to the positive laws which they resemble in purpose but to the moral or other rules which they resemble in operation. If we refuse to accept this position we must abandon the attempt to frame a general definition of law and its dependent terms, or we must content ourselves with saying that law is one thing in one state of society and another thing in another. On the ground of clearness and convenience Austin’s method is, we believe, substantially right, but none the less should the student of jurisprudence be on his guard against such assumptions as that legislation is a universal phenomenon, or that the relation of sovereign and subject is discernible in all states of human society. And a careful examination of Maine’s criticism will show that it is devoted not so much to a rectification of Austin’s position as to correction of the misconceptions into which some of his disciples may have fallen. It is a misconception of the analysis to suppose that it involves a difference in juridical character between custom not yet recognized by any judicial decision and custom after such recognition. There is no such difference except in the case of what is properly called “judicial legislation”—wherein an absolutely new rule is added for the first time to the law. The recognition of a custom or law is not necessarily the beginning of the custom or law. Where a custom possesses the marks by which its legality is determined according to well understood principles, the courts pronounce it to have been law at the time of the happening of the facts as to which their jurisdiction is invoked. The fact that no previous instance of its recognition by a court of justice can be produced is not material. A lawyer before any such decision was given would nevertheless pronounce the custom to be law—with more or less hesitation according as the marks of a legal custom were obvious or not. The character of the custom is not changed when it is for the first time enforced by a court of justice, and hence the language used by Maine must be understood in a very limited sense. “Until customs are enforced by courts of justice”—so he puts the position of Austin—they are merely “positive morality,” rules enforced by opinion; but as soon as courts of justice enforce them they become commands of the sovereign, conveyed through the judges who are his delegates or deputies. This proposition, on Austin’s theory, would only be true of customs as to which these marks were absent. It is of course true that when a rule enforced only by opinion becomes for the first time enforceable by a court of justice—which is the same thing as the first time of its being actually enforced—its juridical character is changed. It was positive morality; it is now law. So it is when that which was before the opinion of the judge only becomes by his decision a rule enforceable by courts of justice. It was not even positive morality but the opinion of an individual; it is now law.

The most difficult of the common terms of law to define is right; and, as right rather than duty is the basis of classification, it is a point of some importance. Assuming the truth of the analysis above discussed, we may go on to say that in the notion of law is involved an obligation on the part of some one, or on the part of every one, to do or forbear from doing. That obligation is duty; what is right? Dropping the negative of forbearance, and taking duty to mean an obligation to do something, with the alternative of punishment in default, we find that duties are of two kinds. The thing to be done may have exclusive reference to a determinate person or class of persons, on whose motion or complaint the sovereign power will execute the punishment or sanction on delinquents; or it may have no such reference, the thing being commanded, and the punishment following on disobedience, without reference to the wish or complaint of individuals. The last are absolute duties, and the omission to do, or forbear from doing, the thing specified in the command is in general what is meant by a crime. The others are relative duties, each of them implying and relating to a right in some one else. A person has a right who may in this way set in operation the sanction provided by the state. In common thought and speech, however, right appears as something a good deal more positive and definite than this—as a power or faculty residing in individuals, and suggesting not so much the relative obligation as the advantage or enjoyment secured thereby to the person having the right. J. S. Mill, in a valuable criticism of Austin, suggests that the definition should be so modified as to introduce the element of “advantage to the person exercising the right.” But it is exceedingly difficult to frame a positive definition of right which shall not introduce some term at least as ambiguous as the word to be defined. T. E. Holland defines right in general as a man’s “capacity of influencing the acts of another by means, not of his own strength, but of the opinion or the force of society.” Direct influence exercised by virtue of one’s own strength, physical or otherwise, over another’s acts, is “might” as distinguished from right. When the indirect influence is the opinion of society, we have a “moral right.” When it is the force exercised by the sovereign, we have a legal right. It would be more easy, no doubt, to pick holes in this definition than to frame a better one.[2]

The distinction between rights available against determinate persons and rights available against all the world, jura in personam and jura in rem, is of fundamental importance. The phrases are borrowed from the classical jurists, who used them originally to distinguish actions according as they were brought to enforce a personal obligation or to vindicate rights of property. The owner of property has a right to the exclusive enjoyment thereof, which avails against all and sundry, but not against one person more than another. The parties to a contract have rights available against each other, and against no other persons. The jus in rem is the badge of property; the jus in personam is a mere personal claim.

That distinction in rights which appears in the division of law into the law of persons and the law of things is thus stated by Austin. There are certain rights and duties, with certain capacities and incapacities, by which persons are determined to various classes. The rights, duties, &c., are the condition or status of the person; and one person may be invested with many status or conditions. The law of persons consists of the rights, duties, &c., constituting conditions or status; the rest of the law is the law of things. The separation is a mere matter of convenience, but of convenience so great that the distinction is universal. Thus any given right may be exercised by persons belonging to innumerable classes. The person who has the right may be under twenty-one years of age, may have been born in a foreign state, may have been convicted of crime, may be a native of a particular county, or a member of a particular profession or trade, &c.; and it might very well happen, with reference to any given right, that, while persons in general, under the circumstances of the case, would enjoy it in the same way, a person belonging to any one of these classes would not. If belonging to any one of those classes makes a difference not to one right merely but to many, the class may conveniently be abstracted, and the variations in rights and duties dependent thereon may be separately treated under the law of persons. The personality recognized in the law of persons is such as modifies indefinitely the legal relations into which the individual clothed with the personality may enter.