Week 1-2

Question 1

The law of persons, things and actions

Answer 1

“assets of economic value”
1. property
2. obligations

Question 2

The law of property

Answer 2

• Ownership of things or res.
• How ownership is acquired.
• How ownership is transferred.
• How the rights associated with ownership may be limited.
• Servitudes: despite owning a thing, someone else may also have a lesser right in the thing owned
• Right in security: how the owner of a thing may grant someone else the right to take ownership of it in certain circumstances
• Enforced using an action in rem

Question 3

The law of obligations

Answer 3

• Voluntary obligations which are legally enforceable, arise from contracts, which are entered into voluntarily by the persons involved, but which then bind those persons to do what they have promised or agreed to do.
• Involuntary obligations, which arise spontaneously in certain scenarios whether the persons involved wish them to, arise either out of various kinds of faults, known by the latin word delictum, and which obligations are dealt with by the law of delict, or which arise because a person has unduly enriched by another person without any legal cause, possibly by accident which obligations are dealt with under the law of unjustified enrichment.
• enforced using an action in personam

Question 4

Action in rem

Answer 4

• Action in rem = an ‘action in respect of a thing’. Person ——> Thing (legal bond)
• “An action in rem is one in which we claim either that some corporeal thing is ours, or that we are entitled to some sort of right, such as that of use or the use and fruits of a thing [usufruct], of foot- or carriage-way, of aqueduct, of raising a building or of view.”
• Actions in rem are used to enforce rights that Gaius grouped together in the Law of Property. We call those real rights. They are in things, and enforceable against the whole world.

Question 5

Action in personam

Answer 5

• action in personam = an ‘action in respect of another person’. Wrongs person ——> Person who has wronged (legal bond)
• “An action in personam is one in which we proceed against someone who is under contractual or delictual obligation to us, an action, that is, in which we claim ‘that he ought to convey, do, or answer for “something”.
• Actions in personam are used to enforce rights Gaius grouped together in the law of obligations. We call those rights personal rights. They are rights against individual persons (or groups of persons) to make them pay or render some-thign which they owe us.

Question 6

Law of property: possession

Answer 6

• Possession is, in essence, a question of fact.
• Possession may simply be natural possession, the mere detention of a thing in your keeping.
• Possession protected by ‘possessory interdicts.’

Question 7

Possessory interdicts

Answer 7

• legal actions or remedies that protect a person’s possession or peaceful enjoyment of property. These remedies are typically available in various legal systems, including common law and civil law jurisdictions, to prevent or address unlawful interference with someone’s possession of property.
• “One acquires possession by an act of the mind and an action of the body (animo et corpore)”.
• Corpus (physical)
• Animus (mind)

Question 8

Possession: sometimes a ‘gateway’ to ownership

Answer 8

• Occupatio: becoming owner of something which is not already owned by anyone else. In such a very specific circumstances possession may also create ownership.
• Usucapio: Possession may also occasionally ripen into ownership, although only in very specialist circumstances
• The good faith possessor is someone who possesses a thing in the honest belief that he is the owner, even though he is not. Usually the good faith possessor will have acquired the thing from a non-owner, in the mistaken belief that the non-owner was actually the owner. But some other person altogether is in the law the true owner. This is rather rare, but in certain circumstances the good faith possessor may become owner over a period of time, but only if the true owner fails to vindicate within a certain number of years.

Question 9

Law of property: ownership

Answer 9

• What powers does an owner have in principle?
  The power of using the thing (ius utendi)
  The power of uplifting the fruits of the thing (ius fruendi)
  The power of disposal of the thing (ius abutendi)
• The relevant action is the rei vindicatio (the vindicatory action)