Unit 4 of Jurisprudence / Legal Theory (syllabus: Module IV — rights and duties, their correlation, rights in the wider sense and the classification of rights; persons, the nature of personality, the legal status of animals, minors, persons of unsound mind, the unborn and the dead, and corporate personality and its theories; property, its philosophical theories, kinds and modes of acquisition; and possession in fact and in law, corporeal and incorporeal, its modes of acquisition and why it is protected). Below: what the unit covers, the provisions it turns on, and the cases an examiner expects you to name.
What this unit covers
- Define a legal right and state its characteristics.
- Must every duty have a correlative right?
- Set out Hohfeld's scheme of jural relations.
- Why is a liberty not a claim?
- Classify legal rights.
- What is legal personality, and what is the status of animals, the unborn and the dead?
- State the theories of corporate personality.
- Define ownership and state its incidents.
- What are the elements of possession, and why is possession protected?
Treat that list as a self-test: recite each topic's rule from memory before you open its cases.
Leading cases
- Salmond
- Austin and Salmond
- W.N. Hohfeld
- Musgrove v Chun Teeong Toy
- Salmond's classification of rights
- Salmond on animals and the dead; Paton on the unborn; Williams v Williams
- Savigny