Page:Henry Osborn Taylor, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations (5th ed, 1905).djvu/21

 THE LAW OF PRIVATE CORPORATIONS. CHAPTER I. THE IDEA OF A CORPORATION IN THE ROMAN LAW. 1 Early Roman view, § 1. A corporation not a person, § 2. Later Roman view, § 3. Special authority to form a corpora- tion necessary only in later times, §4. Varieties of Roman corporations, § 5. Illegal corporations. Dissolution, §6. Corporate capacities, § 7. Corporate management, § 8. Hereditas jacens, § 9. § 1. In the early periods of the Roman law, the idea of a corporation seems to have been that of a collection of individuals among whom, as well as between whom maii^iaw 10 " and outsiders, existed certain special legal relations. If the notion of a corporate whole or unit was present at all, it existed in a rudimentary shape, and was of slight importance. The basis of this view lies in the names of many of the older and more prominent of the Roman corporations ; names which were no other than the names of the members ; as, for instance, gentiles, virglnes vestales, socii vectigalium publicoj'iim. The property, consequently, of these corporations was spoken of as if it belonged to the members, as agri virginum vestaliuvi. 2 Later the term universitas became the generic name for cor- porations of all kinds, 3 a term which seems to have conveyed 1 See Digest, iii. 4, Quod cuiuscum- que uuiversitatis nomine vel contra earn agatur ; Digest, xlvii. 22, De collegiisetcorporibus; Savigny, Sys- tem des heutigen Romischen Rechts, vol. ii. §§ 85-102; Windscheid, Lehr- buch des Pandektenrecbts, i. §§ 57- 62 ; Pucbta, Pandekten, §§ 25-28 ; 1 Arndts, Pandekten, §§ 41-47; Brinz, Pandekten, § 35 and §§ 59-63. 2 See Ibering, Gbeist des Romis- chen Rechts, iii. Theil, note 468 to p. 344. 3 The Rubric of Title 4, liber iii., of the Digest reads: "Quod cuius- cum-que universitatis nomine," etc.