The Green Bag
502
what is required of persons generally. The relation between such specific parties is called an obligation, the word “obligation" in this sense—the original sense in the Roman law-denoting not simply the duty but the entire legal
no general right of mental security, but there are certain limited rights), (d) the right of liberty, whose violation is called imprisonment, (e) the right of reputation.
(2) Potestative rights.
law a chose in action. The distinction between rights in rem and in personam has been considered by some writers
These are absolute, such as a husband has in his wife's consortium and services, or relative, such as he has in her personal security relative to her services. When rights of personal security are spoken of hereafter, these relative potestative rights in the security of the subject of the right, who, not being a thing but in a situation like that of a thing, may be called a subject person, will
to be unimportant.
generally be included.
relation, jun‘: vinculum, between the
parties, consisting in a right on one side and a corresponding duty on the other. The right is called a right in personam,— also an inappropriate name, because all rights are against persons,-—or in our
But it is very
important for purposes of arrangement, because rights in rem can be, and are most conveniently, defined separately from their corresponding duties by defining the states of fact that make up their contents, which are few in number; whereas rights in personam are mostly so intimately .connected with their duties that they cannot be
The same duties
correspond to them as to rights of personal security. (3) Property rights. In a loose sense almost any valuable
or transferable right is called property, e.g., a chose in action.
Here, however,
the name will be confined to such rights as are rights in rem. A normal property
right is a right in a corporeal thing; an abnormal property right is a right
separated for definition, and their con
in an incorporeal thing, such as a patent
tents are so infinitely various, being in
right, which is a right in an invention,
many
or the ownership of shares of stock. Perhaps in some cases it is unnecessary to posit any incorporeal thing. Ease
cases
whatever
the
parties
choose to specify, that they are more
conveniently classified by the facts from which they arise than by their contents.
The states of fact which the law protects generally, which form the contents of rights in rem, are (1) a
person's own life and bodily and mental condition, (2) the life bodily and mental
condition of some other person in whom he has an interest, e.g. his wife or child, (3) the condition of a thing, (4) a
person’s pecuniary condition. On this basis an exhaustive list of rights in rem can be made. as follows:
(1) Rights
of personal security, divided into the following
sub-rights:
(a)
the
right
of life, (b) the right of bodily security, (0) rights of mental security (there is
ments and
rents,
which
in our law
are classed, quite unnecessarily, as incorporeal things, should go with normal property rights, being rights in land. To a large extent the duties that correspond to normal and abnormal
property rights are different. Property rights are generally complex groups of rights comprising both permissive and protected rights. Ownership is the largest of those groups, comprising the full'extent of all the rights in a thing which the law recognizes. Other prop erty rights, as an estate for life, a special property in a chattel or a lien, are inferior property rights comprising only a part of the rights which go to make up
