Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Ownership and Possession

own. Manufacturing presented a somewhat trickier case, but the general idea seems to have been that an object created from raw materials was a new thing and (at least initially) belonged to the person who created it. These ways of gaining ownership apply only once to a given object, but that same object can then change hands any number of times, so the really important rules are about just how this transfer is allowed to happen. There are several “modes” of transferring property directly from one person to another. It would not be worthwhile to go into all the details here, but one complication will be unavoid able. Two of these modes required a certain amount of formal ity or ritual to carry them out, and one had other prerequisites (both parties present at the same time and place; both citizens). So why not just stick with the simplest mode? Roman law divided property into two categories for which there are no precise modern equivalents: res mancipi (primarily Italian land, slaves, and certain livestock) and res nec mancipi (pretty much everything else, including, most notably, cash). Ownership of res mancipi could technically be transferred only by the more complex modes of transfer, even if both parties would have preferred to skip them. That is, the mere fact that the owner of some res mancipi gave or sold it to you did not make you the owner unless you used the proper formalities. (In this respect, it was like the checking of title required for the sale of certain big-ticket items like real estate or cars, but not needed to buy a hamburger or a bicycle.) That didn’t mean the seller could keep it; the contract he agreed to required him to hand it over. But if another person then got her hands on it, you were in

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