Page:Henry Osborn Taylor, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations (5th ed, 1905).djvu/446

 § 446.] THE LAW OF PRIVATE CORPORATIONS. [CHAP. VI11. expressed thus : A. having agreed to sell to B., and B. having agreed to buy of A. certain goods for a certain price, and this agreement having been put in writing, at the instance of either party the state will compel the other to perform as agreed. The last proposition may be separated into the following prop- ositions expressing the rights and liabilities— the legal rela- tions — between A. and B., in which the general rule of. law before stated has manifested itself: A.'s right is with the aid of the state to compel B. (i. e., A. can compel B.) to pay the price agreed on, and B.'s corresponding liability is to pay that price, A.'s right and B.'s liability constituting a legal relation between them. On the other hand, B.'s right is with the aid of the state to compel A. to deliver the chattels ; and A.'s liability is to deliver them ; B.'s right and A's liability again constituting a legal relation between them. § 445. It thus appears that rules of law which manifest themselves in private or civil rights and liabilities, o/anact 60 are no unconditional commands- from the state; the state merely standing ready to aid the person pos- sessing the right. And it appears, moreover, that the only legal effect of an act (except in criminal or public law) is to bring the actor within the operation of rules of law, which thereupon manifest themselves in legal relations between the actor, and other persons affected by the act. 1 § 446. As a conclusion of the foregoing remarks, a definition of law adequate for the purposes of this chapter may be sub- mitted. A law is a rule for conduct which manifests itself in a right and a liability — a legal relation — between The consti- j<i 'i, i 5 • , • c n tution of a persons of whom correlated conditions of facts may t(on°in* be asserted, and is enforced by the state at the in- what re- stance of the person in whose favor it has manifested spect a law. . . ., . itself in a right. And, m accordance with this definition, the constitution of a corporation may be said to be law, or to consist of rules of law, in so far as it is a rule, or consists of rules, for conduct manifesting itself or themselves 1 As to the legal effect of acts, see Holland's Jurisprudence, 2d ed. chap. 12; and an interesting discus- sion in a work by Dr. August Thon, 426 entitled " Rechtsnorm und Subjec- tives Recht," chap. 1. " Die Norm und die Rechtsfolgen ihrer Uebertre- tung."