Sources of Law

• Laws serve to provide order, penalties, dispute resolution, general safety, and protection of citizens' rights.

International Laws

• Govern the relationships between independent nations.
• Created through customs and treaties signed by nations, which are considered binding (e.g., NATO, NAFTA).
• Some organizations, like the UN and international courts, have international legal status.
• Enforcing international law can be difficult.

Domestic Law

• Governs activities within a nation's borders.
• A nation's law-making authority derives from its power to govern.
• This power usually comes from a constitution or monarchy.
• Includes both case law and statute law.
• All individuals within a country's borders are subject to that nation's laws.

Substantive Law

• Defines the rights, duties, and obligations of citizens and the government.
• Governs conduct, such as the right to own and protect property, and entering into contracts.

Procedural Law

• Prescribes the methods of enforcing the rights and obligations under substantive law.
• Ensures fair treatment for all citizens.
• Prevents arbitrary actions by the police and courts.
• Includes proper procedures for gathering evidence and conducting trials.

Public Law

• Regulates the relationship between the government and its citizens.

Types of Public Law

• Administrative Law: Relates to the relationship between individuals and government departments, boards, and agencies (e.g., social assistance, health and safety).
• Criminal Law: Identifies crimes and their punishments as described in the code.
  • Prohibits behavior that causes harm to others (e.g., murder, assault).
  • Prohibits behavior such as bank robbery and kidnapping.
  • Crimes are considered offenses against society.
• Constitutional Law: Deals with the distribution and exercise of state powers.
  • Overrides all other laws.
  • Divides power among different branches of government.
  • Courts interpret these laws to ensure constitutionality.

Private Law (Civil Law)

• Governs relationships between private individuals and between individuals and organizations.
• Also known as civil or case law.
• Excludes government organizations; regulates conduct and compensates those harmed by wrongful actions.
• Includes tort law, contract law, family law, wills and estates (estate law), property law, and employment law.
  • Tort Law: Holds individuals or private organizations responsible for damages caused to another person due to an accident or deliberate action.
  • Contract Law: Provides rules for agreements between people and businesses.
  • Family Law: Deals with aspects of family life, including marriage, property division upon separation, and child custody.
  • Wills and Estates: Governs the division of property after death, including cases where someone dies without a will.
  • Property Law: Governs ownership rights in property, including buying and selling real estate.
  • Employment Law: Governs employer-employee relations, covering minimum working age and restrictions on working hours.

Principles of Private Law

• All humans are considered persons under the law.
• Freedom of contract: all non-illicit agreements are valid.
• No liability without negligence.
• Legal actions are limited by time.

Counter-Principles of Private Law

• There can be humans who are not persons, and persons that are not humans.
• Property is conceded by the state and should be limited in the public interest.
• Only contracts permitted by society are allowed.
• Liability can be strict, and objective justice must always prevail, regardless of how much time has passed.

Different Cultures and Political Societies

• Principles of absolute property and freedom of contract are common in capitalist, liberal, and democratic societies.
• Counter-principles are common in socialist, traditional far-right societies, and non-Western models of democracy.
• Mixed systems balance principles and counter-principles in more or less capitalist/socialist and liberal/non-liberal societies.

Legal Person (Persona)

• Denotes any human or anything permitted to assert legal claims or be subjected to legal duties.
• Legal persons are created artificially and recognized by law.
• They are persons only in the eyes of the law and are also referred to as fictitious, juristic, artificial, or moral persons.
• Examples include idiots, deceased persons, corporations, companies, and idols.

Definition of Person

• Salmond: A person is any being whom the law regards as capable of having rights and duties, whether a human being or not.
• Savigny: Defines a persona as the subject or bearer of a right.
• Gray: A person is an entity to which rights and duties may be attributed.
• Austin: Includes physical or natural persons, encompassing every being deemed human.

Classification of Persons

• Natural Persons (Human Beings): An individual living human being.
• Legal or Artificial or Juristic Persons

Natural Person

• An individual living human being, to whom the law attributes personality and who has rights and duties.
• To be a natural person, an individual must be a living human being and recognized by the state as a person, not a slave or civilly dead.

Circumstances Affecting Civil Personality

• Birth: Determines personality; juridical capacity begins at birth.
• Minority: having juridical capacity but no capacity to act.
• Age: Important factor in matters like marriage, consent, crime, and statutory rape.
• Death: their legal rights, duties get ended; rights pertain to the deceased's body, reputation, and estate.
• Status: The legal condition or position of a person by virtue of which certain rights and duties arise.

Classes of Juridical Persons

• State and its political subdivisions.
• Corporations, institutions, and entities for public interest or purpose, created by law.
• Corporations, partnerships, and associations for private interest or purpose, to which the law grants a juridical personality.
• Public corporations by laws creating or recognising it, private corporations by laws of general application on the subject.

Theories of Juristic Personality

• Fiction Theory: Personality of a corporation is different from that of its members (Savigny).
  • Corporations are creations of law with no existence apart from their members, whose actions are attributed to the corporate entity.
• Concession Theory: A legal person has importance because its recognized by the state or the law
  • A juristic person is merely a concession or creation of the state.
  • Focuses on the state as the source from which the legal power of the corporation is derived.

Defining Humans Philosophically and Biologically

• Biologically humans are defined as members of the species Homo sapiens, characterized by the ability to walk upright, opposable thumbs, and a large brain relative to body size.
• Philosophically humans are defined by traits emphasizing rationality, consciousness, self-awareness, and the capacity for moral judgment.