Definitions of law and Others

 

Definitions of law

• Salmond: According to Salmond, “law is a collection of the rules which the state recognises and applies in the administration of justice.”
• Austin: According to Austin, “law is the command of the sovereign.”
• Woodrow Wilson: Woodrow Wilson maintains that “law is that portion of the established thought and habit which has gained distinct and formal recognition in the shape of uniform rules backed by the authority and power of the government.”
• H.R Soltan: According to H.R Soltan, “A law is a rule of behavior for the members of state, the disregard of which meets with a penalty which will be enforced by the state’s machinery of power.”
• Holland: In the opinion of Holland, “A law is a general rule of external human action enforced by a sovereign political authority.”
• Willoughby: Professor Willoughby maintains that laws are ‘these rules of conduct that control courts of justice in the exercise of their jurisdiction. Ad distinguished from all rules of conduct that obtain more or less general recognition in a community of men, they are such as have for their ultimate enforcement the entire power of the state.”
• Krabbe: According to Krabbe, “law is the expression of the judgments of value which we human beings make by virtue of our disposition and nature.”
• Antony Allot: According to Antony Allot, law is what is made in political society, if it is autonomous, for the regulation of behavior of persons in that society.
• Hindu Ideas: According to Hindu Ideas, Dharma contained the sanction of law. it applied to all alike, whether he be King or a poor citizen.
• Demosthenes: Every law is a gift of God, and decision of sages.
• De Montmorency: Coercion is a weapon of law which law has forged, but it is not the basis of law.”
• Green: Law is the system of rights and obligations which the state enforces.”

Definitions of Justice

• George Washington: Administration of justice is the firmest pillar of government. Law exists to bind together the community. It is sovereign and cannot be violated with impunity.
• Blackstone: Justice is not derived from the king as his free gift but he is the steward of the public to dispense it to which it is due. He is not the spring but the reservoir from whence right and equity are conducted by thawed channels to every individual"
• Salmond: The administration of justice implies the maintenance of right within a political community by means of the physical force of the state. It is a modern and civilized substitute for the primitive practice of private vengeance and violent self-help".
• Diamond: According to Diamond, courts appear in the early ages of primitive communities’ of course without the system of trials.
• Sir Henry Maine: Sir Henry Maine observes that the patria protesta was the judge for adjudicating family disputes. The primitive societies, however, believed in the eradication of the wrong doer than his rehabilitation or reformation. The usual modes of punishments were banishment or confiscation of goods or death penalty.
• Hebrew code: The Hebrew code provided that "he that smiteth a man, and he dies, shall surely die'.
• Code of Manu: The code of Manu also prescribed punishment for each offence.
• Roman Twelve Tables: Likewise Roman Twelve Tables contain elaborate provisions regarding administration of justice and punishment of offenders. In the early Anglo-Saxon laws and Norman codes in England trials by battle and jury are well known methods for private vengeance.

Definitions of Comparative Law

• Levy Ullman: According to Levy Ullman ‘Comparative law’ has been defined as a branch of legal science whose object it is to bring about systematically the establishment of closer relations between the legal institutions of different countries.
• Holland: Holland defines the term ‘Comparative law’ collects the legal institutions of various countries, and from the results thus prepared the abstract science of jurisprudence is enabled to set forth an orderly view of the ideas and methods, which have variously been realised in actual systems.
• Bernhoft: Bernhoft points out “Comparative law sets forth how people of a common origin have independently developed the traditional legal conception; how a people modifies the institutions which it inherits according to its own views; and thus how, without any material connection, the legal systems of different nations develop according to common evolutionary principles. Briefly it attempts to discover the idea of law in the several legal systems."
• Jullius Stone: Jullius Stone remarks "Comparative law seeks to describe what is common and what is different in different legal system or to seek a 'common core' of all legal systems."
• Rheinstein: Rheinstein says “the term should be reserved to demonstrate those kinds of scientific treatment of law which go beyond the taxonomic or analytical description of technical application of one or more systems of positive law."
• Sir Henry Maine: Sir Henry Maine says "The chief function of comparative jurisprudence is to facilitate legislation and the practical improvement of law.
• Pollock: Pollock remarks “it means no difference whether we speak of comparative jurisprudence or as the Germans inclined to say of the general history of law.”
• Randal: Using the term comparative legislation instead of comparative law” Randal observes “ Comparative legislation is in the nature of subterfuge, seems to have been devised in order to emphasise the practical as opposed to the academic aspect of comparative legal research, and stresses upon the two features of the results which ay be obtained by the use of comparative method. The first of these results is the collection and distribution of information as to foreign law. The second is the utilization of the experience gained in other systems of law for the purpose of law reform.”
• James Bryce: James Bryce says that “Comparative method collects, examines, and collates the notions, doctrines, rules and institutions, which are found in every developed legal system, or at least in most systems, notes the point in which they agree or differ and seek thereby to construct a system, which shall be natural, because it embodies what men, otherwise, unlike have agreed in feeling to be essential, philosophical because it gets below words and names and discovers identity of substance under diversity of description and serviceable, because it shows what particular means the ends which all or most systems pursue have been attained.”
• Bartholomew: Bartholomew points out “Briefly comparative method may be described as far as legal studies are concerned as that method of study, whereby two or more legal systems, concepts, institutions or principles are investigated with a view to ascertaining the differences and similarities between them.”
• G.W Keetone: Professor G. W Keeton says “Comparative jurisprudence considers the development of two or more systems of law. The term has more than one meaning. The science may have for its object the discovery of those legal rules, which are common to the legal system studies; or again it may discuss those relations of individuals, which have legal consequences, together with an enquiry how these relations find expression in the legal system considered. More frequently comparative jurisprudence selects various legal topics and explains fully their method of treatment in two or more systems of law.”

Definitions of Jurisprudence

• Etymological meaning:- Etymologically ‘Jurisprudence’ means “knowledge of law”.
• Patterson:- According to Patterson ‘Jurisprudence’ means a body of ordered knowledge which deals with a particular species of law.
• Jullius Stone:- According to Jullius Stone ‘Jurisprudence’ means ‘lawyer’s extraversion. It is the lawyer’s examination of the precepts, ideas and techniques of the law in the light derived from present knowledge in disciplines other than the law.
• Ogden and Richard:- According to Ogden and Richard, ‘Jurisprudence’ means any though or writing about law (other than a technical exposition of a branch of law itself).
• Dias and Hughes:- According to Dias and Hughes there is no proper meaning of the term ‘Jurisprudence’. Any thought or writing about the concept of law, social functions or purposes of law etc are fit subjects for jurisprudence.
• G. c. lee:- For G. C. Lee ‘Jurisprudence’ is a science which endeavors to ascertain the fundamental principles of which the law is the expression. It rests ‘upon the laws as established facts, but at the same time i is a power in bringing the laws into coherent system and in rendering all parts thereof subservient to fixed principles of justice.
• Kelson:- For Kelson, study of ‘Jurisprudence’ is the study of a hierarchy of norms, the validity of each norm depending on that of a superior norm ‘Grund Norm’. (For him norm means ‘rule of conduct’.  Grund norm means the superior norm).
• Lawellyn: According to Lawellyn ‘Jurisprudence’ means an empirical study of events and factors that influence the judge.
• Keetone:- According to Keeton ‘Jurisprudence’ is the study and systematic arrangement of the general principles of law.
• Lord Lloyd:- According to Lord Lloyd ‘Jurisprudence’ involves the study of general theoretical questions about the nature of laws and legal system, about the relationship of law to justice and morality and about the social nature of law.
• Allen C. K: - According to Professor Allen ‘Jurisprudence’ is the scientific synthesis of the essential principles of law.
• Buckland:- To quote Buckland; “the analysis of legal concepts is what jurisprudence meant for the student in the days of my youth.
• Ulpian’s Definition:- The celebrated Roman jurist, Ulpian defined jurisprudence as “the observation of things human and divine, the knowledge of the just and unjust”. The definition is too broad and might well apply to religion, ethics or philosophy.
• Paulms:- Another Roman jurist said that “law is not to be deduced from the rule but the rule from the law”.
• Gray:- Professor Gray also defined ‘Jurisprudence’ more or less in the same manner. He opined that jurisprudence is the science of law, the statement and systematic arrangement of the rules followed by the courts and the principles involved in these rules.
• roscoe pond:- Roscoe Pond defines ‘Jurisprudence’ as the ‘ science of law, testing the terms law in the juridical sense as denoting the body of tribunals recognised or enforced by public and regular principles in the administration of justice.’
• Raddiffle:- According to Raddiffle ‘Jurisprudence’ is a part of history, a part of economics and sociology, a part of ethics and a philosophy of life. Thus it is an amalgam of a number of other disciplines interwoven together for the common good of the society.
• Encyclopedia Britannica:- According to Encyclopedia Britannica ‘Jurisprudence’ is the name given to those studies, researches and speculations which aim at answering the plain man’s question; what is law? It is proposed to define law for the jurists as the sum of the influences that determine decisions in courts of justice.
• Cicero: - Cicero defines ‘Jurisprudence’ as the philosophical aspect of the knowledge of law.
• Oxford Dictionary:- Oxford dictionary defines ‘Jurisprudence’ as the systematic and formulated knowledge or the science of human law.
• Wharton’s law lexicon:- Wharton’s law lexicon defines ‘Jurisprudence’ as the science of law, especially of Roman law.
• Kant:- Kant treats ‘Jurisprudence’ as the science of right. He says the science of right thus designates the philosophical and systematic knowledge of the principles of natural right.
• Salmond’s Definition:- Salmond defines ‘Jurisprudence’ as the “Science of the first principles of the civil law” Jurisprudence thus deals with a particular species of law, viz, civil law or law of the state. This kind of law consists of rules applied by courts in the administration of justice. It has characteristic features that distinguish it from law of every other kind.
• Austin’s Definition:- Austin refers to jurisprudence as the “philosophy of positive law”. By positive law or jus positivism he means the law laid down by a political superior for controlling the conduct of those subject to his authority. “Positive law” as used by Austin is thus identical with “civil Law”. The term “Philosophy” used by Austin in describing jurisprudence is somewhat misleading. Philosophy deals with the most general theories about things, human and divine, while jurisprudence restricts itself to the general theory of man-made law.
• HOLLAND’S DEFINTION:- Sir Thomas Erskine Holland has defined jurisprudence as the “formal science of positive law”. A formal science, as distinguished from a material science, is one which deals not with concrete details but with the fundamental principles underlying them. Jurisprudence in this view should concern itself with the general portion of legal doctrine. It should deal with the general conceptions and pervading principles that constitute the basis of any mature system of law.
• Salmond’s Definition:- Salmond defines jurisprudence as the science of the first principles of the civil law. He points out that jurisprudence deals with a particular species of law e.g. civil law or law of the state. The civil law consists of rules applied by courts in the administration of justice.

Definitions of Obligation

• Kant: According to Kant, obligation is “the possession of the will of another, as a means of determining it, through my own, in accordance with the law of freedom, to a definite act.”
• Holland: Professor Holland observes, “an obligation, as it etymology denotes, is a tie; whereby one person is bound to perform some act for the benefit of another. In some cases the two parties agree thus to be bound together, in other cases they are bound without their consent. In every case it is the law which ties the knot, and its untying solutio, is competent only to the same authority.
• Salmond: According to Salmond an obligation may be defined as “a proprietary right in personam or a duty which corresponds to such a right.”
• Paton: Professor Paton also describes it as that part of the law which creates right in personam.
• Savigny: Savigny defines obligation as “the control over another person, yet not over his person in all respects (in which his personality would be destroyed), but over single acts of his which must be conceived of subtracted from his free-will and subjected to our will.”

Definitions of Right

• Austin: Right is a faculty which resides in a determinate party as parties by virtue of a given law which avails against a party or parties other than the party or parties in whom it resides.
• Holland: Legal right as the capacity residing in one man of controlling, with the assent and assistance of the state, the actions of others.
• Salmond: A right is an interest recognised and protected by a rule of right. It is an interest respect for which is duty, disregard of which is wrong.
• Dugit: No one has any other right than always to do his duty.
• Windscheid: According to Windscheid a right is “a power or authority of the will conferred by the legal order.
• In the generic sense, a legal right may be defined as any advantage or benefit conferred upon a person by rule of law of right.
• The English word “Right” means which is straight not crooked in opposition to wrong which is twisted from the straight.
• In Ethics “Right” means that which is in conformity with morality and so is morally good.
• The word “Right” is equivalent to the Latin “Rectus” from which we derive such words as rectify, rectitude and correct.
• The term “Right” is also used as equivalent from the Latin term “Jus” from which we derive such words as just, justify etc.
• Rights may be defined as a moral power over what is one’s own.
• Right indicates existence of some capacity power or freedom in an individual to hold, act, exact something in society with its power and permission by which others are reframed from acting contrary to the determinant of such individual.
• Rights are as Hobbhouse puts it, “what we may expect from others, and others from us, and all genuine rights are conditions of social welfare”.
• According to Dean Pond, as a noun the word “Right” in legal sense has five analogous meanings:
• One meaning is interest which is secured and protected by law.
• A record meaning is a recognized claim to act or forbearances by another or by all in order to make the interest effective.
• A third use is to designate a capacity of creating, divesting or altering rights. Here the proper term for right would be power.
• A fourth use is to designate certain conditions or general special non-interference with the natural facilities of action. They are better called liberties and privileges and
• Right is used as an adjective to mean that which accords with justice that which recognises and gives effect to moral rights.
• Legal right means which is recognised and enforced by law. Ihering in his book ‘Spirit of the Roman law’ defined rights as legally protected interest.
• Justice Mathew observed in Kesvananda Bharti, the word right has to be reserved for those claims a privileges which are recognised and protected by law.
• Madras H.C in Daniel vs. State devoted some time in analysing the concept of legal rights and observed; “From the statement of eminent jurists the following principles can be deduced broadly to understand what a legal right is;
• Legal right in its strict sense is one which is an ascertainable claim, enforceable before courts and administrative agencies
• In its wider sense, a legal right has to be understood as any advantage or benefit conferred upon a person by a rule of law
• There are legal rights, recognised by law.
• There are rights recognised by the international court granted by the international law; but not enforceable and
• A legal right is a capacity of asserting a secured interest rather than a claim that could be asserted in the courts.
• A legal right may be one recognised by rule of law either by Municipal law or International law without the capacity of being enforced.
• Zouche: Potentia Boni, Iustitiae regulis consentanea.
• Puffendorf:Qualitas illa moralis qua recte vel personis imperamus vel res tenemus, aut cuius vi alquid nobis debetur.
• Leibnitz:Quaedam potentia moralis.
• Kant:Die Befugniss zu zwingen.
• Prof. Grey; points out that ‘Right is not the interest itself it is the means by which the enjoyment of the interest is secured’.
• Allen defines a ‘right’ as ‘the will power of a man applied to a utility or interest recognised and protected by a legal order.
• Savigny holds that ‘right’ is an individual’s power or authority in the sphere in which his will rules, with our occurrence. And each jural relation says Savigny, “It is relation between person and person determined by a rule of law”.
• Kohler defines a right as a, “Relation sanction and protected by the legal order”.
• Holmes talks of, “Liberty backed by the force of the state”.
• Kelsen, every time right that is not a mere negative freedom from a duty consists of a duty of another or of many others. He continues: the term right and the term relative duty signify the same notion considered from different aspects.
• Hibbert defines right as one person’s capacity of obliging others to do forbear by means not of his strength but by the strength of a third party. If such third party is God, the right is divine. If such third party is public, generally acting through pinion, the right is moral. If such third party is the state, acting directly or indirectly, the right is legal.
• The expression right may generally be defined as the standard of permitted action without a certain sphere.
• Supreme Court of India: Supreme Court of India in State of Rajasthan versus Union of India observed “In a strict sense, legal rights are correlative of legal duties and are defined as interests whom the law protects by imposing corresponding duties on others. But in a generic sense, the word ‘right’ is used to mean immunity from the legal power of another, immunity is exception from the power of another. Immunity in short is ‘No-subjection’.
• Natural law lawyers: Natural law lawyers like Grotius defined right as moral quality by which a person is competent to do or have a thing justly.
• In the case of Mr. X v/s Hospital Z the Supreme Court observed as follows:
• “Right is an interest recognised and protected by moral or legal rules. Respect for such interest would be a legal duty or if there is a legal duty vested in a person who is bound by a corresponding duty not to violate that right”.
• Similarly in Tokugha Yepthomi versus Apollo Hospital Enterprises Ltd.it was observed that “An interest to become the subject of legal right, it has to have not merely legal protection but also a legal recognition. The elements of a legal right are that the ‘right’ is vested in a person and is available against a person who is under corresponding obligation and duty to respect that right and has to act or forbear the right. If, therefore there is a legal right vested in a person, the latter can seek its protection from a person who is bound by a corresponding duty not to violate that right”.

Definitions of Ownership

• The literal meaning of the term ‘own’ is to have or hold a thing. The one who holds a thing as his own is said to be the owner and has the right of ownership over it. Thus in the non-legal sense ownership may be defined as the right of exclusive control over and disposal of a thing at will.
• A right of ownership is a right of dominion over the property concerned so as to include the available rights attached to ownership the right to possess the property, the right to use the property as also the right to alienate or even to destroy the property though all those rights may not be present at the same.
• In the legal sense the term ownership carries the connotation of right over a thing to the exclusion of all other persons. This implies non-interference by others in the exercise of this right and must be distinguished from mere holding of a thing in one’s possession.
• Ownership implies two elements, one is formal element, and namely will, power, capacity, and faculty etc. another is the material element i.e, the thing owned. For example if A has Rs 100= it (Rs 100) constitutes the material element of his ownership, while his power under the law to spend material element of his ownership, while his power under the law to spend it, to gift it or to will it is the formal element of his ownership.
• The right of ownership is the most complete or supreme right that can be exercised over anything. As Hibbert observes it consists in fact of four rights, viz.,(i) Using the thing, (ii) Excluding others from using it, (iii) Disposing of the thing, and (iv) Destroying it.
• However, as Markby observes, ownership should not be regarded as an aggregate of rights. It is in fact only a single comprehensive right. “if all the rights over a thing were centered in one person, the person would be the owner of the thing and ownership would express the condition of such a person in regard to that thing. But the innumerable rights over a thing thus centered in the owner are not conceived as separately existing. The owner of land has not one right to walk upon it, and another right to till it. All the various rights which an owner has over a thing are conceived as merged in one general right of ownership….To use a homely illustration it is no more conceived as an aggregate of distinct rights than a bucket of water is conceived as an aggregate of separate drops.”
• In Butterworth’s words and phrases legally defined, ‘ownership’ has been defined as;
• “Ownership consists of innumerable rights over property, for example the right of exclusive enjoyment, of destruction, alternative, and alienation and of maintaining and recovering possession of the property from all other persons. Such rights are conceived not as separately existing but as merged in one general right of ownership.
• Austin in his book jurisprudence defines the right of ownership as ‘a right indefinite in point of user, unrestricted in point of disposition and unlimited in point of duration over determinate thing.”
• The theoretical concept of ownership, therefore, appears to be that a person can be considered to be owner if he has absolute dominion over it in all respects and is capable of transferring such ownership.
• Ownership in its most comprehensive signification,’ says Salmond “denoted the relation between a person and any right that is vested in him, that which a man owns in this sense is a right.” The right of ownership comprises benefits like claims, liberties, powers, immunities and privileges and burdens like duties, liabilities, disabilities whatever advantages a man may have as a result of the ownership of a right may be curtailed by the disadvantages in the form of burdens attached to it.
• Ownership is a tie or a relation between a person and a thin. It is the sum total of the rights of possession, disposition and destruction.
• According to Hibbert, the fullest ownership consists of four rights i.e, the right of (i) using the thing; (2) excluding others from using it (3) disposing of the thing; and (4) destroying the thing. According to him one cannot in English law have absolute ownership in land as land cannot be destroyed. He says that one can have only one estate in it- an estate being defined as the legal interest of a party in land measured by duration and entitling the party to put the land to uses of an indefinite nature. According to him in movable, one can have absolute ownership since one can destroy them.
• Sohm defines ownership as a right, unlimited in respect of its contents to exercise control over a thing. It is a right in rem. It involves the right of user or taking produce and of destruction.
• Ownership, in strict sense, is a right (existing as against the whole world as such) of an individual or a body corporate or unincorporated, to possess a thing, to exclusively use it, to alienate or even to destroy it in a lawful manner.
• Ownership, in its wider sense, has been defined by Austin, as a right “indefinite in point of user, unrestricted in point of disposition and unlimited in point of duration.” Austin considers the right of alienation of property as a necessary incident of the right of ownership. Today, however, under our laws, there are restrictions on the right of alienation; subject to these restrictions and subject to the encumbrances, if any, on the property, the same may be alienated.
• Etymological meaning: The word mine and thine represents the notion of the institution of property which is as old as man himself. The expression one’s own is very familiar and meaningful one which is related to some material object in the exclusive control and possession of the owner. In other words, a thing is said to be one’s own when it is reserved to a certain person and all others are excluded from it.
• Ownership is a complex juristic concept. The instinct, power, and law all combine to make it a very heterogeneous concept. Time and again, many attempts have been made to define at, but the most important definition of it is that it is an interest in a thing recognized by a system of law.
• English law has however, not confined the term ownership to enjoyment material things, but has extended a wider meaning to it, which is an anomaly dictated by convenience, whereas the Roman view of it is simpler enough and confines dominium to absolute ownership of material things. This is not only convenient but also of practical importance. Various claims, privileges, powers and immunities may certainly be the contents of ownership but not ownership itself. Thus, if the ownership is taken to consist of those various claims, etc, it may be contended here that there is no point in taking of a concept of possession as different from them. Such a view of ownership is unnecessary and inadequate. The use of the word ownership does not correspond simply with its component elements any more than the word ‘crowed’ correspond with identified individuals.
• Both from legal and sociological point of view, the concept ownership is of special importance. The idea has not only been utilized by the courts through the ages in such a way as to get effect to their views of changing individuals and social interest but so weightily are its results that in modern times it has become the focus of government policy.
• Keetone: According to Keetone “the right of ownership is a conception clearly easy to understand but difficult to define with exactitude. There are two main theories with regard to the idea of ownership. The great exponents of the two views are Austin and Salmond. According to one view, ownership is a relation which subsists between a person and a thing which is the object of ownership. According to the second view, ownership is a relation between a person and a right that is vested in him.
• Paton: According to Paton, the rights of an owner are the power of enjoyment, the right of possession,  the power to alienate inter vivos or to charge as security, and the power to leave the rest by will.
• Hohfeld: According to Hohfeld, ownership is a collection of rights, privileges and powers, some of which are frequently found to reside, either for a limited period or perpetually, in person other than the owner. Ownership is no more conceived as an aggregate of distinct rights than a bucket of water is conceived as an aggregate of separate drops. As we take one drop or many drops from the bucket. Likewise we can detach one or several rights from ownership.
• Buckland: According to Buckland, ownership is “the ultimate right to the thing or what is left when all other rights vested in various people are taken out.”
• Noyes: According to Noyes, ownership is the magnetic core which remains when all present rights of enjoyments are removed from it and which attracts to itself the various elements temporarily held by others as they lapse.
• Pollock: According to Pollock “ownership may be described as the entirety of the powers of use and disposal allowed by law.”
• Austin “ownership as a right which avails against everyone who is subject to the law conferring the right to put thing to use of indefinite user.”

Definitions of Person

• Sec 42 of general clauses Act 1897 defines the term "Person" as would include any company or association or body of individuals whether incorporated or not. As such long for as legal theory is concerned person means the capacity of being a 'right' and duty bearing unit.
• Savigny has defined the terns "person" as the subject or bearer of a right"; but as pointed out by Holland this definition is not exhaustive. Rights avail against persons as much as they are reposed in them.
• Zitelmann: According to Zitelmann, "Personality is the legal capacity of will. The bobolinks of ken are for their personality a wholly irrelevant attribute.
• Maurer observes the juristic conception of the juristic person exhausts itself in the will and the so-called physical persons are for the law only juristic persons will a physical super flume."
• Karlowa says, "The body is not merely the house in which the human personality dwells; it is together with the soul which now for this life is inseparably bound with it, the personality. So, not only as a being which has the possibility of willing, but as a being which can have manifold bodily and spiritual needs and interests as a human, centre of interest, is a man, a person".
• Section 11 of Indian Penal Code: Person includes any company or association or body of persons whether incorporated or not.
• Then term has apparently been derived from Personare and Persona was used to describe the Greek actor's mask through which his voice must be sounded. Later, in the course of time, the expression came to be used for those who could play a part in the legal drama, i.e. those who were recognized by the law as being capable of having rights and duties. But the expression did not remain confined to this meaning alone. Rather has been understood as the relational substratum of human beings, wherein in the legal sense it may mean a right and duty bearing unit. Persons, in the latter sense, are thus the substances of which rights and duties are the attributes. Legal personality, which is wider than humanity is the creation of law. There are, indeed, human beings but are not persons in the legal sense, such as, slaves in the early times. Similarly, there are legal persons who are not, in fact, human beings, such as funds, idols and corporations. Legal personality is thus a convenient juristic device by which the problem of organizing rights and duties is carried out.
• It is in this respect only that persons possess juridical significance, and this is the sole point of view from which personality receives legal recognition.
• Grey defines Person as an entity to which rights and duties may be attributed.
• In Greek law, we find instances of animals and trees being tried for harm done to human beings. Therefore, they were considered capable of having duties even if they possessed no rights.
• Under early English law an animal or inanimate which had been the instrument of serious injury and more especially death to a human being, had to be surrendered to the vengeance of the injured party or his relatives. In later times this rule was modified so that the implement with which an individual committed a crime was surrendered to the king. This survived until 1846. Present law, however says that animals are incapable of possessing rights and duties.
• In ancient Indian law like Roman law, the concept of legal personality was not clearly understood. In fact there was no such necessity for it. The coparcener of Hindu Law may be considered to be unit. The head or the courtier of the family acts in a representative capacity and in this capacity he sues and can be sued. There were other groups where some members of the group acted in a representative capacity. But they can't be said to be legal persons in the modern sense of the term. In the ancient Hindu system, however, some form of corporation was recognized. We find its evidence in certain texts. In Pramatha Nath Mullick versus Pradeyumma the court held that idol is a juristic persons, it would own property; it could sue and could be sued.

Definitions of Possession

• Mark by: Possession is the determination to exercise physical control over a thing on one’s own behalf coupled with the capacity of doing so.                 
• Holmes: Possession is a conception which is only less important than contract.                                Salmond: Salmond has opined that possession is an important concept but it is difficult to define it.
• Sir Hennery Maine: Possession signifies not simply physical detention coupled with intention to hold the thing detained as one’s own.
• Sir Fredrick Pollock: A man is said to be in possession of anything of which he has the apparent control from the use of which he has the apparent power of excluding others.
• Zacharias: Possession is that relation between a subject matter and the man which intimates the man has the animus domini and that is also able to put it into execution.
• Savigny: Savigny makes the possession dependent in consciousness of physical power and intend to control the thing. Likewise Holland , Keetone and Salmond defines possession in relation to an object or thing which involves the exclusion of others persons from the enjoyment of it.
• Salmond: Salmond has defined possession as the continuing exercise of a claim to the exclusive use of it.
• Law of Germany: Under the law of Germany possession is the retention or enjoyment of a thing or of a right which we have or which we make use of, either ourselves or through another person who holds it or makes use of it in our name.
• In India the framers of penal code also expressed difficulty to mark with precision by any words the circumstances which constitute possession.

Definitions of Sovereignty

• Jellineck : The characteristic of the state by virtue of which it cannot be legally bound except by its own or limited by any power other than itself”’
• Grotius : “Sovereignty is the sovereign political power vested in him whose acts are not subject to any other and whose will cannot be over-ridden.”
• Bodin : “Sovereignty is the supreme power of the state over citizens and subjects unrestrained by law.”-
• Dugit: “Sovereignty is the common power of the state, it is the will of the nation organized in the state, it is right to give unconditional orders to all individuals in the territory of state.”
• Burges: Burges characterized sovereign is the original, absolute, unlimited power over the individual subjects and over all associations of subjects.”
• Sovereignty is that power which is neither temporary nor delegated, nor subject to particular rules which it cannot alter, not answerable to any other power over earth.”
• Willoighby: Sovereignty is the supreme will of the state”.
• Woodrow Walsom : Sovereignty is the daily operative power of framing and giving effacy to the laws.”
• Blackstone: Sovereignty is the supreme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority in which the ‘jurist summi’ reside.”
• The sovereignty is “legally supreme over an individual or group, says Laski, he possesses “supreme coercive power

Definitions of State

• Willoughby: Willoughby writes that the state exists “where there can be discovered in any community of persons a supreme authority exercising in any community of persons a supreme authority exercising control over the social activities of individuals and groups of individuals and itself subjects to no such regulations.”
• Aristotle: Aristotle defined the state as “a union of families and villages having for its end a perfect and self-sufficing life by which we mean a happy and honorable life”.
• Cicero: Cicero defined the state as “a numerous society united by a common sense of right and a mutual participation in advantages.”
• Supreme Court: The Supreme Court has put a case before a constitutional bench which said that the definition and scope of ‘state’ is vast and that there is no specific barometer in testing as to what comes under the definition of ‘state’ and what doesn’t. It said that Article 12 is inclusive in nature and not exhaustive and hence represents “great generalities of the Constitution”.
• Sedgwick: According to Sedgwick, the state is a political society or community, i.e., a body of human beings deriving its corporate unity from the fact that its members acknowledge permanent obedience to the same government which represents the society in any transaction that it may carry on as a body with other political bodies.
• Phillimore: Phillimore defines the state as “a people permanently occupying a fixed territory, bound together by common laws, habits and customs into one body politic exercising through the medium of an organized government independent sovereignty and control over all persons or things within its boundary, capable of making war and peace and entering into international relations with the communities of the globe.
• Bodin: In 1576 Bodin defined the state as “an association of families and their common possessions, governed by supreme power and by reason.”
• Holland defines the state as “a numerous assemblage of human beings generally occupying a certain territory amongst whom the will of the majority or class made to prevail against any of their number who oppose it.”
• Burges: Burges defines the state as “particular portion of mankind viewed as an organized unit.”
• Bluntschi: Bluntschi defines the state the politically organized people of a definite territory.”
• Woodrow Wilson: According to Woodrow Wilson, the state is people organized for law within a definite territory.”
• Professor Laski: Professor Laski defined state as “a territorial society divided into government and subjects claiming within its allotted physical area, a supremacy over all other institutions.”
• Garner: Garner writes “the state is a community of persons more or less numerous, permanently occupying a definite portion of territory, independent or nearly so of external control and possessing organized government to which the great body of inhabitants render habitual obedience.
• Oppenheim: The state exists says Oppenheim, “When a people are settled in a country under its own sovereign government.”
• G.D.H Cole: G.D.H Cole says that the state “is whole community of its members regarded as organised social unit.”
• Hall: Hall, viewing the state primarily as a concept of international law says, the marks of an independent state are that the community constituting it is permanently established for a political end, that it possesses a defined territory and that it is independent of external control.”
• Dr. Garner: According to Dr. Garner, state as a concept of political science and public law, is a community of persons more or less numerous, permanently occupying a definite portion of territory, independent or nearly so, of external control and possessing an organised government to which the great body of inhabitants renders habitual obedience.”
• R.M Maclver: R.M Maclver believes that the state is “an association which acting through law as promulgated by a government endowed to this end with coercive power maintains within a community territorially demarcated the universal external conditions of social order.”
• Marxist: According to Marxist opinion, “the state arose as a result of the division of society into antagonistic classes for the purpose of curbing the exploited majority in the interest of the exploiting majority. The state is the political organization of the ruling class which uses it for the purpose of suppressing the resistance of its class enemies. It is an organization for the maintenance of the rule of one class over the other classes. To achieve this the state possesses such instruments of power as an army, the courts , a police force, etc.”
• Professor Gilchrist: According to Professor Gilchrist “he state is a concept of political science and a moral reality which exists where a number of people living on a definite territory, are unified under a Government which in internal matters is the organ for expressing their sovereignty and in external matters is independence of other governments.”
• Bentham: Bentham writes “when a number of persons are supposed to be in the habit of paying obedience to a person or an assemblage of persons, of a known and certain description, such person together are said to be in a  state of political society.”
• Modern concept of the state, views of Gabriel Almond and Dahl: Gabriel Almond use the term “political system” instead of the state. According to him political system is the system of interaction to be found in all independent societies which perform the functions of integration and adaptation (both internally and vis-à-vis other societies) by means of the employment, or threat of employment, of more or less legitimate physical compulsion”. The political system”, he explains, “is the legitimate, order maintaining or transforming system in the society.”
• Holland: According to Holland, “a state is a numerous assemblage of human beings, generally occupying a certain territory amongst whom the will of the majority or of an ascertainable class of persons is, by the strength of such majority or class made to prevail against any of their members who oppose it.”
• Pennock and Smith: Pennock and Smith defines the state as a political system comprising all the people in a defined territory and possessing an organization (government with the power and authority to enforce its will upon its members, by resort, if necessary, to physical sanctions and not subject in the like manner to the power and authority of another polity.
• Robert A Dahi says, “The political system made up of the residents of the territorial area is a state.”
• Briely: According to Briely, a state is an institution, that is to say, it is a system of relations which men establishes among themselves as a means of securing certain objects, of which the most fundamental is a system of order within which their activities can be carried on.”
• “A state is a body of free persons, united together for the common benefit, to enjoy peaceable what is their own, and do justice to others.” The expression “state” is derived from the Latin term “Status” which means “standing” that is to say the position of a person or body of persons.
• Salmond: Salmond defines a state as “A society of men established for the maintenance of order and justice within a determined territory by way of force.
• Grotius: Grotius says ‘a state is the complete union of free men who join themselves together for the purpose of enjoying law and for the sake of public welfare.”
• MacIver: According to MacIver “a state is the fundamental association for the maintenance and development of social order, and to this end its central institution is endowed with the unlimited power of the community.
• Chalmers: According to Chalmers ‘ a state is an independent political society occupying a definite territory or territories the members of which are united together for the purpose of resisting external force and the preservation of internal order.
• Keetone: Keetone says, state is a political society as it is an association for political ends which distinguishes the state from other for political ends which distinguishes the state from other great communities of person, e:g; a trade union, church.
• Ancient Hindu jurists: According to Ancient Hindu jurists a state is a political unit consisting of two parts, sovereign and the subject, the latter rendering habitual obedience to the former; Hindu thinkers held that state was an indispensable institution for the orderly existence and progress of society. In the world, a country without government can’t even exist. The most distinguishing features of ancient Hindu state was that it was family and not the individual which constituted the political unit. We have to conceive of the kindred, not as an artificial body or a corporation to which the Sruti allows authority over its members, but as an element of the state not yielding precedence to the Sruti itself.
• R.G Gettell: R.G Gettell’s view is that “State is a community of persons permanently occupying a definite territory, legally independent of external control, and possessing an organized government which creates and administers law over all persons and groups within its jurisdiction.