Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

Ownership and Possession

be easier to show than ritual), but it also created problems of its own. While valuable in the long term, usucapio left a short term problem. If, for instance, you bought some item of res mancipi without ceremony (presumably assuming you would eventually “usucapt” it, i.e., gain ownership by usucapio ), there would be a period after the sale when you were not technically the owner (and so could not enforce your rights by the proce dure just described), but when the technical owner (the seller) would have no reason (and perhaps no right) to enforce your would-be ownership against a third party. The problems were never entirely resolved during our period, but some changes in the law chipped away at them (whether or not that was the original intention). The next two sections of this chapter will discuss those changes. As we have just seen, the rules of ownership had a certain logic, but were in danger of getting too far removed from reality. Anyone who could win ownership in court probably deserved it, but many people who were equally deserving likely could not prove ownership. Eventually, the Edict was used to create a more flexible, more realistic situation. The general idea was to give some legal protection to the mere possession of property (when ownership had not been established), and the means of doing so was not the vindicatio , but rather an order from the praetor called an interdict. Protecting ownership is an attractive Possession

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