Page:Henry Osborn Taylor, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations (5th ed, 1905).djvu/443

 CHAP. VIII.] CORPORATION AND STATE. [§ 441. mission to a determinate or common superior, let that common superior be a certain individual person, or a certain body or aggregate of individual persons. 2. That certain individual or the certain body of individuals is not in the habit of obedience to a determinate human superior." 1 § 440. So far Austin. An acute writer, Professor Holland, gives the following definition of law : " A law in the Holland > s proper sense of the term is a general rule of human and Kent's r l. to i definitions. action taking cognizance onlv of external acts, en- forced by a determinate authority, which authority is human, and among human authorities is that which is paramount in a political societ} 7-. More briefly, a general rule of external hu- man action enforced by a sovereign political authority." 2 And, finally, the definition given by Kent is this : " Municipal law is a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power of the state." 3 In one respect, perhaps, these various definitions may be found fault with. It may be said that they are not univer- sally and historically correct, *. e., that they correspond only to the conception of law, current among those nations of the Aryan race who have developed their institutions under the influence of the Roman law. 4 But this objection amounts to little, as any definition of law not so vague as to be useless would be obnoxious to it; and for the present purpose the objection has no force, as we are only concerned with law as conceived to-day in America and England. § 441. Austin's definition of a law, however, as a " command which obliges a person, or persons, to acts or for- bearances of a class," while, perhaps, unexception- u^Jf™ 1 able when limited in its application to Roman and mand '' modern European and American notions of law, and when understood as Austin meant it, is, nevertheless, in respect of laws which manifest themselves in civil rights, somewhat misleading. Holland, as we have seen, calls a law " a general rule of external human action enforced by a sover- eign political authority," a definition which resembles Kent's 1 Province of Jurisprudence, Lec- ture VI. 2 System of Jurisprudence, 2d ed. p. 34. 3 1 Com., 507. 4 See Maine's Early History of In- stitutions, chaps. 12 and 13. 423