Ancient Law - Law Dictionary Search Results
Home Dictionary Name: ancient law Page 1 of about 96 results (0.005 seconds)Ancient law
Ancient law, uniformly refuse to dispense with a single gesture, however, grotesque, with a single syllable, however its meaning may have been forgotton; with a single witness, however superfluous may be his testimony. The entire soleminises must be scrupulously completed by persons legally entitled to take part in them, or else the conveyance is null, and the seller is re-established in the rights of which he had vainly attempted to divest himself. Henry S. Maine, Ancient Law, 225-26 (17th Edn. 1901).Ancient law, is the law of antiquity, considered esp. either from an anthropological standpoint or from the standpoint of tracing procedure to modern law, Black Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 85....
Civil Law
Civil Law, that rule of action which every particular nation, commonwealth, or city has established peculiarly for itself, more properly distinguished by the name of municipal law.The term 'civil law' is now chiefly applied to that which the Romans complied from the laws of nature and nations.The 'Roman Law'and the 'Civil Law' are convertible phrases, meaning the same system of jurisprudence; it is now frequently denominated 'the Roman Civil Law.'The collections of Roman Civil Law, before its reformation in the sixth century of the Christian era by the eastern Emperor Justinian, were the following:--(1) Leges Regi'. These laws were for the most part promulgated by Romulus, Numa Pompilius and Servius Tullius. To Romulus are ascribed the formation of a constitutional government, and the imposition of a fine, instead of death, for crimes; Numa Pompilius composed the laws relating to religion and divine worship, and abated the rigour of subsisting laws; and Servius Tullius, the sixth king,...
Institutions
Institutions. It was the object of Justinian to comprise in his Code and Digest, or Pandects, a complete body of law. But these works were not adapted to the purposes of elementary instruction, and the writings of the ancient jurists were no longer allowed to have any authority, except so far as they had been incorporated in the digest, Smith's Dict. of Antiq. It was therefore necessary to prepare an elementary treatise, and the Institutes were published a month before the Pandects, A.D. 533, and designed as an elementary introduction to legal study (legum cunabula). The work was divided into four books, subdivided into titles.The Institutes are the elements of the Roman Law, and were composed at the command of the Emperor Justinian, by Trebonian, Dorotheus, and The ophilus, who took them from the writings of the ancient lawyers, and chiefly from those of Gaius especially from his Institutes and his books called Aureorum (i.e., of important matters).The Institutes are divided into four...
Ancient demesne
Ancient demesne, a tenure now abolished by s. 128 of the (English) L. P. Act, 1922 (12 & 13 Geo. 5, c. 16), see COPYHOLDS, but formerly existing in certain manors, which, though now granted to private persons, were in the actual possession of the Crown in the times of Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror, and appear to have been so by the great survey in the Exchequer called Domesday Book, and, therefore, whether lands are ancient demesne or not, is to be tried only by this book, called in consequence Liber Judicatorius; but the question must be tried by a jury whether lands be parcel of a manor which is ancient demesne, being a question of fact. There is great confusion in the books respecting this tenure. It is only the freeholders of the manor who are truly tenants in ancient demesne, and land held in ancient demesne, passes by common law conveyance without the instrumentality of the lord. The copyholders is an ancient demesne manor are merely to be considered as occupying...
Bracton
Bracton, the author of the Latin treatise entitled De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angli'. He lived at the latter end of the reign of Henry the Third. Bracton's book, compared with that of Glanville, is a voluminous work. It is divided into five books, and these into tracts and chapters. See 2 Reeves' Hist. c. viii. 86, note (a), for an analysis of the several divisions of the chapters and a complete digest of the contents of this venerable code. The rules of property are explained; the proceedings in actions, through the minutest steps, are investigated and developed; while every proposition is supported by fair deduction, or corroborated by the authority of some adjudged case, so that the reader never fails in deriving instruction or amusement from the study of this scientific treatise on our ancient laws and customs. Bracton was deservedly looked up to as the first source of legal knowledge, even down to the time of Sir Edward Coke, who seems to have made this author his guide in all ...
Vavasor
Vavasor. The first name of dignity, next beneath a peer, was anciently that of vidames, vice domini, or valvasors: who are mentioned by our ancient lawyers as viri magn' dignitatis; and Sir Edward Coke speaks highly of them. Yet they are now quite out of use; and our legal antiquaries are not agreed upon even their original or ancient office (1 Bl. Com. 403). And see Comden's Brit.; Reeves, c. 5, p. 26.The vassal or tenant of a baron, one who held under a baron and also had subtenants, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn....
Piracy
Piracy [fr. pirata, Lat.], the commission of those acts of robbery and violence upon the sea, which if committed upon land wold amount to felony. Pirates hold no commission or delegated authority from any sovereign or State, empowering them to attack others. They can, therefore, be only regarded in the light of robbers. They are, as Cicero has truly stated, the common enemies of all (communes hostes omnium); and the law of nations gives to every one the right to pursue and exterminate them without any previous declaration of war (see Piracy Jure Gentium, 1934, AC 586, where a frustrated attempt was held to be piracy by that law); but it is not allowed to kill them without trial, except in battle. Those who surrender or are taken prisoners must be brought before the proper magistrates, and dealt with according to law. By the ancient Common Law of England, piracy, if committed by a subject, was held to be a species of treason, being contrary to his natural allegiance; if by an alien, to ...
Wreck
Wreck, such goods, including the ship or cargo or any part [(English) Merchant Shipping act, 1894 (57 & 58 Vict. c. 60], ss. 518 to 522, and Hals. L. E., sub tit. 'Shipping'; Part XII., 'Wreck,'), as, after a shipwreck, are afloat or cast upon the land by the sea. According to an old definition (Jacob's Law Dict., tit. 'Wreck') they were not wrecks so long as they remained at sea in the jurisdiction of the Admiralty. By s. 510 of the (English) Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, 'wreck' includes in that Act 'jetsam, flotsam, and derelict found in or on the shores of the sea or any tidal water.'The term is used in several senses, e.g., a ship which is so damaged as to be unable to continue her voyage is a 'wreck' for the purposes of s. 158 of the M.S. Act, 1894; and Barras v. Aberdeen Steam Trawlers, 1933, AC 402, under the (English) Merchant Shipping (International Labour Conventions) Act, 1925 (15 & 16 Geo. 5, c. 42); The Olympic, 1913 P. 92. The old distinction appears to be that if propert...
Jus gentium
Jus gentium, the law of nations, Roman Law. See Maine's Ancient Law, ch. iii., and International Law....
Nature, law of
Nature, law of, certain rules of conduct supposed to be so just that thy are binding upon all mankind. See NATIONS, LAW OF; and consult Maine's Ancient Law....
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