The Classification of Law code, to use Bentham's phraseology, opposed to the substantive code.
as
in a way which has fastened itself upon our common law and implicated it
in our constitutional It is more difiicult to determine the prin ciple of the other division, the relation of the law of Persons to the law of Things. They both deal with the rights and duties of persons in the ordinary modern acceptation of the word; why then, we may inquire, are certain rights and duties of persons separated from the rest and dealt with under the distinguish ing category of fur personaruml'
565
and
statutory
law. Gaius does not ignore the sources of the law, for he enumerates them, but
in the face of what he probably under stood as well as any other, as Austin
says: “He (Gaius) divided jus, or law, into jus gentium and jus civile, and, having shown the various sources of the
We must look to the details of the law of Persons, and observe whether its dispositions have any common character as contrasted with the dispositions of the law of Things. The law of Persons, in other words, the law of status, classifies men as slaves and free, as citizens (privileged) and as aliens (un privileged), as paterfamilias (superior) and as filiusfamilias (dependent). The law of Things looks at men as playing the parts of contractors or of neighboring proprietors. . . . It is the more surprising that Austin should apparently have failed to seize with pre cision this conception of the law of Persons, as he makes the remark, in which the whole
truth seems implicitly contained, that the bulk of the law of Persons composes the Public, Political, or Constitutional code (fus publicumy”
Poste in these few words almost solves
our inquiries by pointing out the sub topics which would naturally be grouped under these divisions. It is the establishment of the dis
tinction between the jus personamm and jus rerum, as used in the English law, which constitutes the master stroke
of Hale's, Wood's, and Blackstone's per formance. This involved making a great distinction between the Roman conception of the same words and their meaning in the English law. Lord
assumption of law, or jus, proceeds to divide the same subject according to
the objects or subjects with which it is conversant."" Hale and Blackstone invoke the same principle.
Blackstone
says:
“The
objects of the laws of England are so very numerous and extensive that in order to consider them with any tolerable ease and perspicuity it will be necessary to distribute them methodically under
proper and definite heads;" adding, "The objects of the law of England falling into this fourfold division, the present
commentaries
will
therefore
consist o.‘ the four following parts."’0 The fourfold division of his work into Part I. Law of Persons, including Public (Political) Relations and Domestic (Private) Relations and Corporate Relations (Artificial Persons). Part II. Law of Things, including the law relating to Property, Contracts and Obligations. Part III. Private Injuries and Redress, and Part IV. Crimes and Punishments—
to old words so far as it suited his
is not superior but subordinate to the primary classification “Rights and Wrongs.’ This latter classification cor responds in the subjects embraced precisely with the division introduced
purpose, and Blackstone carried out
by
the idea and established the distinction between personal relations and things
stamina and adjective law, but does not
Hale pointed out distinctly that he intended to give a different meaning
3' Poste's Gaius, 40, 41.
’
Bentham under the
30 Austin's Jurisprudence, 761. m 1 Elk. Com., 122, any edition.
names sub
