constitutions of juristic persons are too various to admit of any general definition. In towns the supreme direction and representation belonged to the Senate (curia, ordo). A meeting of twothirds of the whole number of members represented the whole senate, and the vote of the majority in such a meeting was the decision of the senate. Although a Universitas is said to hold common property, the relation of the members of a Universitas must not be identified with that of Coproprietors (communio). A coproprietor is the separate proprietor of an undivided ideal portion, which he can aliene, mortgage, and otherwise dispose of; and which, by requiring a partition (actio communi dividundo), he can always reduce to a real portion : whereas the whole of the common property can only be dealt with if the coproprietors are unanimous. Members of a Universitas, on the contrary, cannot demand a partition; and dispositions of the property of the Universitas can only be made, and can always be made, by the vote of a majority of two-thirds of the members. Every juristic person was originally incapable of being instituted successor (heres), as Pliny mentions in the case of municipalities: Nec heredem institui nec praecipere posse rempublicam constat. Epist. 5, 7. Neither successions nor legacies by praeceptio (which imply that the legatee is also heir, 2 § 217) can be left to a town.' Juristic persons were not subject to this incapacity because they were personae incertae, 2 § 238, for they are personae certae, but because, being fictions, they were incapable of aditio, which involves intention, and excludes representation. First the senate, disregarding this difficulty, allowed municipalities to be instituted successors by their own liberti, Ulpian 22, 5: and subsequently the Emperor Leo, A. D. 469, gave to municipalities the capacity of being instituted successor by any testator, Cod. 6, 24, 12. No general enactment extended this capacity to all Corporations, but some received it as a special privilege. Originally towns, like other juristic persons, were incapable of taking bequests (legata), but subsequently towns were declared capable by Nerva and Hadrian, Ulpian 24, 28; Gaius 2 § 195: and this capacity was extended to Collegia and Templa, D. 34, 5, 20, and probably to all juristic persons. Towns were also capable of taking successions by fideicommissum, Ulpian 22, 5. Under Christian legislation Pious Foundations (pia corpora) were made capable of taking hereditas and legatum: and devises of hereditas and legatum, that would otherwise have been void by the rule avoiding devises to incerta persona, e. g. a devise to the poor of a town who, not forming a corporation, were not persona certa, acquired validity from the pious purpose of the disposition. Some juristic persons have special privileges; for instance, the Fiscus has privileges over other creditors. Sometimes the individual members have certain privileges; for instance, the rank of municipal senator (decurio) was hereditary and the senate formed a kind of caste. The origin and extinction of a juristic person requires the assent of the sovereign. The special privileges and incapacities which we have indicated, by their analogy to status, may perhaps justify the mention of Universities in the law of Persons. Savigny, §§ 85-102. BOOK II. DE REBUS SINGULIS ET DE RERUM UNIVERSITATIBUS. DE RERUM DIVISIONE. § 1. Superiore commentario de iure personarum exposuimus; modo videamus de rebus: quae vel in nostro patrimonio sunt, vel extra nostrum patrimonium habentur. § 2. Summa itaque rerum divisio in duos articulos deducitur: nam aliae sunt divini iuris, aliae humani. § 3. Divini iuris sunt veluti res sacrae et religiosae. § 4. Sacrae sunt quae Diis superis consecratae sunt; religiosae, quae Diis manibus relictae sunt. § 5. Sed sacrum quidem solum existumatur auctoritate populi Romani fieri; consecratur enim lege de ea re lata aut senatusconsulto facto. § 6. Religiosum vero nostra voluntate facimus mortuum inferentes in locum nostrum, si modo eius mortui funus ad nos pertineat. § 7. Set in provinciali solo placet plerisque solum religiosum non fieri, § 1. In the preceding book the law of persons was expounded; now let us proceed to the law of things, which are either subject to private dominion or not subject to private dominion. § 2. The first division of things is into two classes: things subject to divine dominion, and things subject to human dominion. § 3. Subject to divine dominion are things sacred and things religious. § 4. Sacred things are those consecrated to the gods above; religious, those devoted to the gods below. § 5. Sacred things can only become so with the authority of the people of Rome, by consecration in pursuance of a law or a decree of the senate. § 6. A religious thing becomes so by private will, when an individual buries a dead body in his own ground, if the burial is his proper business. § 7. On provincial soil, according to most authorities, as the dominion § 12. Quaedam praeterea res corporales sunt, quaedam incorporales. § 13. Corporales hae sunt quae tangi possunt, veluti fundus, homo, vestis, aurum, argentum et denique aliae res innumerabiles. § 14. Incorporales sunt quae tangi non possunt: qualia sunt ea quae in iure consistunt, sicut hereditas, ususfructus, obligationes quoquo modo contractae. nec ad rem pertinet, quod in hereditate res corporales continentur; nam et fructus qui ex fundo percipiuntur corporales sunt, et id quod ex aliqua obligatione nobis debetur plerumque corporale est, veluti fundus, homo, pecunia: nam ipsum ius successionis, et ipsum ius utendi fruendi, et ipsum ius § 12. Again, things are either corporeal or incorporeal. § 13. Things corporeal are tangible, as land, a slave, clothing, gold, silver, and innumerable others. § 14. Things incorporeal are intangible; rights, for instance, such as inheritance, usufruct, obligation, however contracted. For though an inheritance relates to things corporeal, and the fruits of land enjoyed by a usufructuary are corporeal, and obligations generally relate to the conveyance of something corporeal: land, slaves, money; yet the right of succession, the right of usufructuary enjoyment, and the right of the contractor, are incor obligationis incorporale est. eodem numero sunt et iura praediorum urbanorum et rusticorum, quae etiam servitutes vocantur. [13 fere lineae desunt.] poreal. So are the rights attached to property in houses and land, denominated servitudes or easements. Having treated of the law of Persons (unequal rights), we proceed to the law of Things (equal rights), and the first right which Gaius intends to discuss is the right called Dominion. Seduced, however, by an ambiguity of the word Res, which signifies either a right or the subject of a right, his opening statements (§§ 12, 13, 14) are deplorably confused. In order to see our way, let us first examine Res as denoting the Subject of a right. Every right implies, as we have stated, an obligation; and every right or obligation implies at least two persons, one of whom has the right while the other has the obligation. The immediate OBJECT of every right is an act or forbearance of the person who has the obligation. But the act or forbearance generally relates to some body, that is, to some tangible portion of the external world, whether a thing or a person. This body, accordingly, may be called the mediate, indirect, or secondary Object of the right, or, in the nomenclature we have adopted, its SUBJECT The subject of a right, however, is not always a body; it may be corporeal or incorporeal. For instance, dominion over land is a right to forbearance on the part of all the world from molestation of the owner in dealing with the land. A servitude, say a right of way, is a right to forbearance on the part of all the world from molestation of the person entitled when he passes over certain land. A contractual right is a right to a positive act or performance on the part of a determinate person, say, to the conveyance or delivery of a certain piece of land. In these cases, land, the subject or secondary object of the right, is something corporeal. So, too, when a third person is the subject of a right; for instance, a child or a gladiator, 3 § 199, in the possession (detention or custody) of the parent or employer, and whose removal from such possession engenders in the removing party an obligation ex delicto. But in primordial rights, the subject, at least as distinguished from the two parties in whom the right and obligation respectively vest, is something incorporeal. A man has a right to forbearance on the part of all the world from molestation in his life, health, locomotion, honour. These subjects of the right are incorporeal. Other rights, appa |