Page:Ancient Law.djvu/192

CHAP. VI. expression universitas juris is not classical, but for the notion jurisprudence is exclusively indebted to Roman law; nor is it all difficult to seize. We must endeavour to collect under one conception the whole set of legal relations in which each one of us stands to the rest of the world. These, whatever be their character and composition, make up together a universitas juris; and there is but little danger of mistake in forming the notion, if we are only careful to remember that duties enter into it quite as much as rights. Our duties may overbalance our rights. A man may owe more than he is worth, and therefore if a money value is set on his collective legal relations he may be what is called insolvent. But for all that the entire group of rights and duties which centres in him is not the less a "juris universitas."

We come next to a "universal succession." A universal succession is a succession to a universitas juris. It occurs when one man is invested with the legal clothing of another, becoming at the same moment subject to all his liabilities and entitled to all his rights. In order that the universal succession may be true and perfect, the devolution must take place uno ictu, as the jurists phrase it. It is of course possible to conceive one man acquiring the whole of the rights and duties of another at different periods, as for example by successive purchases; or he might acquire them in different capacities, part as