Page:Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning.pdf/31

46 also X has the power to create contractual obligations of various kinds. Agency cases are likewise instructive. By the use of some metaphorical expression such as the Latin, qui facit per allum, facit per se, the true nature of agency relations is only too frequently obscured. The creation of an agency relation involves, inter alia, the grant of legal powers to the so-called agent, and the creation of correlative liabilities in the principal. That is to say, one party P has the power to create agency powers in another party A,—for example, the power to convey X's property, the power to impose (so-called) contractual obligations on P, the power to discharge a debt, owing to P, the power to "receive" title to property so that it shall vest in P, and so forth. In passing, it may be well to observe that the term "authority," so frequently used in agency cases, is very ambiguous and slippery in its connotation. Properly employed in the present connection, the word seems to be an abstract or qualitative term corresponding to the concrete "authorization,"—the latter consisting of a particular group of operative facts taking place between the principal and the agent. All too often, however, the term in question is so used as to blend and confuse these operative facts with the