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The Green Bag
principles should consist of two parts,
namely, a general part, in which (a) the great leading ideas and (b) principles of law are brought together, and a specific part, in which the nature of (a)
each law [rule] is separately examined and its application determined." This indicates that there are three different fundamental elements, viz.: Leading Ideas, Principles and Rules. And under such divisions all the elements of a given body of law can be grouped. Here
then is one way of dividing a Book of
of jurisprudence, as “right,” “duty," “ob1igation," “wrong," “injury," “sta tus,” “thing,” “property,” “estate," “title,” “possession,” “action," “reme
dy," “justice,” "equity," “law,” “gov ernment, ” “agreement,” “contract," "act," “event,” “volition,” “will," “in tent,” etc.
It will be observed that these abstract concepts are not identical with either principles or rules, but that they are the elements, i.e., logically speaking, primordial facts which exist and which
the Law, and it is the usual modern
lie at the basis of all the conceptions of
method of arranging commentaries on general jurisprudence, or on a specific
jurisprudence.
body of law.
vocabulary of the law, the weaving
Poste, in the introduction to his translation of Gaius, says :— The words which denote the instruments and materials of legislation and the subject matter of jurisprudence are Law, Sanction,
stitute the
These words, then, con
substantive
part
of the
together of which with words denoting motion and relation gives expression to
vital principles and operative rules. Everything is in some manner rela
tive to the great concepts." As Poste
Title, Right, Obligation. The definitions of these five terms may, indeed, be regarded
says: —
as a single definition, for the things denoted by these five words are merely the same thing looked at from difierent sides; at least they are correlative ideas, indissolubly connected parts of the same indivisible whole. The definitions of these terms which we proceed to give are their definitions, it is to be ob—
If we are asked, what in Jurisprudence are the ideas corresponding to the categories of Substance, Quality, Quantity, Relation, or whatever else Logicians make the immut able framework of their science, we must point to some of the above abstractions— Law, Sovereign, Sanction, Obligation, Title. Without these and similar conceptions no jurisprudence can be imagined. And to this extent the bases of jurisprudence are natural and unchangeable, but to this extent only.“
served, as used in jurisprudence,
that is,
in the exposition not 10f natural or moral laws butliof positive or ‘political laws, and are accordingly unconnected with the hypotheses, of any particular school of ethical speculation. Every Right implies law by which it is created, a Title to which it is annexedI a Sovereign by whom it is enforced, a Sanction by means of which it is enforced, a Person in whom it resides, and a Person upon whom
a correlative obligation is incumbent. The same, mutatis mutandis, may be said of every relative Obligation."
Leading Ideas. If thought is given to the subject it becomes plain that nearly all of our law clusters around certain leading ideas or concepts, the symbols of which are the great substantive terms 1’ Poste's Gaius,fp.'_2.
Principles of law are not identical
with either leading ideas or with specific rules. Professor Amos says: In every legal system there is to be found a great hierarchy of leading principles, com mencing at the central institutions of the Family, the State, Ownership, Contract, and Procedure, and proceeding to the order, next in succession, of Rights and Duties,
and Acts and Events giving rise to Rights and Duties as dependent on an indefinite variety of states of fact.“1 1' Assuming the enumeration to be complete. which it is not. 1‘ Poste's Gaius. p. 23.
1' Amos’ An English Code, p. 68.
