WILLIAMS, PERSONAL PROPERTY, 7-8, Ownership . Estates.. 40 REAL PROPERTY, 23, Real and Personal Actions.... 60-63, Modern Tenures.. 130, Powers of Life Tenants.. 178, Tortious Feoffment.. 232, 238, Grant...... 236-238, Lease and Release. 242, Registration... 285, Wills... 10 118 261 536 509 507 542 522 352-355, 359, 363-367, Married Women's Property Rights, 488 359, Curtesy in Equitable Estates... 367-371, Dower... 398, Rule in Shelley's Case.... 430, Contingent Remainders of Trust Estates. 268 275 353 400 WILLIAMS' SAUNDERS, I., 253, Seisin of Husband... 487 232, 238 520 WILLS, STATUTE OF (32 Hen. VII., c. 1).. New York Statute of.... . WYMAN 7. BROWN (50 Me. 139), Statutory Deeds..... 518 524 511 READINGS IN THE LAW OF REAL PROPERTY. BOOK I. THE PLACE OF REAL PROPERTY IN THE COMMON LAW SYSTEM. CHAPTER I. CLASSIFICATION OF PROPERTY. (a) The Natural Classification. DIGBY, HIST. REAL PROP., App., § 1. The rights and their corresponding duties which form the matter of English private law are first to be divided into two great classes, differing from each other in respect of the persons on whom the duties, which correlate to the right, are incumbent. A person may have a right the essence of which consists in the fact that all other persons whatsoever are under a duty corresponding to the right; or he may have a right the essence of which consists in the fact that the corresponding duty is incumbent on some one or more determinate person or persons. An example of the first class of rights is the right of property which a person has in or over a piece of land or a herd of cattle. All other persons whatsoever are bound to abstain from acts injurious to his power of dealing as he pleases with his own. In other words, he may enjoy, use, and, if he pleases, if the thing is perishable, use up, the thing which is the subject of the right, subject only to certain. general limitations, and also to certain special limitations prevailing in particular cases, where his rights are limited by conflicting rights possessed by other persons over the same subject. Rights of this class have received the name of rights in rem, an expression which means, not rights over things, but rights available against all the world, i.e., where a duty is incumbent on all persons whatsoever to abstain from acts injurious to the right. Opposed to rights in rem, or rights available against all the world, is the other great class of rights, namely, rights which are available only against some particular or determinate person or persons. These are called rights in personam, which is an abridged expression for rights in personam certam or determinatam. The principal, though not in our law the only, sources of these rights are contracts and injuries. When one person has entered into a contract with another, as, for instance, when he is bound by a promise to pay money, to deliver goods on a certain day, not to carry on a trade within a given area, a legal tie is created as between these two parties, the one has a right against the other, the one is under a duty toward the other, and no third party or stranger to the contract shares either in the right or in the duty. So when any right, whether in rem or in personam, is violated, a new right in personam arises. If my right of excluding all persons from my house or field is violated by a trespasser, a new right as against that individual trespasser accrues to me, namely, a right to adopt the appropriate remedy provided by the law. So when a person is bound by contract to deliver goods on a future day, or not to carry on a trade within a given area, the breach of the contract gives rise in each case to new and distinct rights, rights to pursue the proper legal remedy against the wrongdoer. It will be seen at once that rights in personam comprise some of the most important branches of the law, but they are here mentioned only to be excluded, since it is clearly not under that head that the law relating to land will be found. The law dealing with rights in rem may be called—using the term "property "in a large sense-the law of property, or the law dealing with property-rights. The word "property" is used in so many senses as to be nearly useless for juristic purposes. One of its best known applications is where it is applied to any collection of rights in rem, as distinct from rights in personam. The Roman lawyers marked the difference between the two branches of law by the words dominium and obligationes. If the word "property" were not so ambiguous, one might venture to suggest that the "law of property," or " of property rights," should be substituted for the obscure expression rights in rem. Rights in rem may be subdivided into two great classes in respect of their subjects. By the subject of a right is meant the thing, if any, over which the right is exercised. My house, horse, or watch is the subject of my right of property. There are, however, some rights in rem which cannot properly be said to have any subjects, or to be exercised over any definite things. These will be noticed presently. The great distinction next to be mentioned between two classes of rights in rem, differing in respect of their subjects, is peculiar to English law and the systems derived from it. In Roman law and the systems to which it has given rise there is no such fundamental distinction between the law relating to land and the law relating to things movable, as to necessitate a separate treatment for each branch. It is otherwise in English law, and the outline of its history which has been given in the preceding chapters will account for this characteristic of our system. The distinction therefore under consideration is between rights in rem, which have for their subject things real, that is to say, things immovable-in other words, land and all that is permanently affixed thereto; and rights in rem, which |