Legal Analysis and Terminology

Abstract

Every student of the law must be equipped with certain fundamental concepts and with certain terms in which to express them. Let him read the federal Constitution or the opinion of any court or any legal treatise, or let him listen to the lecture of any law professor, and every sentence will be likely to bristle with rights and duties, powers, privileges, liabilities, and immunities. He will gradually realize also that these terms are frequently used loosely, each term often being used to express several distinct concepts, and he will find that our dictionaries merely record this wide and variable usage and aid little toward the clear expression essential to exact reasoning. No doubt the beginner cannot be made to realize at once the disadvantages attendant upon variableness of terms and uncertainty of concept. But it is quite possible at the very outset to master a number of fundamental legal concepts and to acquire a single definite meaning for each of the terms used to express them. With such simple concepts and definite phraseology the student can more easily analyze a complex problem, arrive at a correct solution, and explain it clearly to others. He can thus be led to avoid much unnecessary obscurity and difficulty. As his experience increases he must test for himself the accuracy and usefulness of the analysis and terminology. The following definitions are offered, chiefly for the benefit of beginning students of the law, in order to assist in establishing an exact terminology and a definiteness and accuracy of mental concept. These definitions are in large part based upon the articles of Professor Wesley N. Hohfeld, referred to below. I. FAcr: This is a world of facts. Physical existence and physical relations are facts. Our mental processes are facts. The existence of any legal relation is a fact. All changes and variations are facts. Facts include acts and events. II. ACT: An act is one of that class of facts manifest to the senses that consists of voluntary physical movements (muscular contractions that are willed) of human beings. A forbearance is a consciously willed absence of physical movement. Animals other than men can act or forbear, but they do not become parties to a legal relation. III. EVENT: Any change in the existing totality of facts, including the acts of human beings.