The Arrangement of the Law short and approximate definition. The state of fact, not any act, is the content
501
but few; some duties respond to many
of the right. It may be a state of fact which already exists which the law
rights, some to few. There are certain rights of a general nature whose contents are defined by
seeks to preserve. such as a person's existing bodily condition or his posses
the law, duties corresponding to which rest upon others generally. Such are
sion of his property; or it may be a state of fact which the law seeks to bring into existence, such as the possession by a creditor of the money due him. If the protected state of fact includes the
rights of personal security and property. Every one owes to me certain duties
condition of a specific person or thing, such person or thing is its subject. Rights of property include protected as well as permissive rights. The con tents of protected rights of property are mentioned below. A protected right cannot be exercised; there is no act to be done or omitted by the holder of it. But it can be violated. The violation of a. right, as the word is here used, means any impairment of the protected state of fact by the conduct of any other person than the holder
of the right. In this sense the violation of a right is not necessarily wrongful. It is wrongful only when the conduct of another which causes it is a breach of some one of the duties which are im posed to protect the right, which duties are said to correspond to the right. If A handling carefully a loaded gun
shoots B by pure accident, B's right of bodily security is violated just as if A had shot him intentionally; the physi cal condition of his body, which is the protected state of fact, is impaired in the same way; but in the latter case the violation is wrongful and in the former it is not. There is no general rule to determine what duties correspond
to any particular right, what commands or prohibitions the law lays upon others to protect a particular state of fact, or to what rights a particular duty cor responds. Some rights have many
duties corresponding to them, some
not to injure my person or property. These rights are said to avail against persons generally or against all the world,and are called rights in rem, an inappropriate name. because they are not necessarily rights in or respecting things. But although some duties corresponding to a right in rem will rest upon all other persons, it is not true, as some writers have erroneously sup
posed, that exactly the same duties rest upon every other person, or that the
duties are necessarily negative duties,— duties to abstain from acts. There are some general duties which do rest upon all persons, and these are negative duties; there are no kinds of acts which every one is bound to do for others. But a person may put himself into a particular situation where he will come to owe duties to others different from what are owed by persons who are not
in such a situation, which duties may correspond to such general rights in rem
as personal security or property, and these more special duties may be or include duties to do acts. Such are the duties of a person who keeps a dangerous thing in his possession to use care to prevent it from doing harm. Persons may
by agreement,
or
in
some cases in other ways, create special rights between themselves different from the above-mentioned general sort of
rights. A particular state of fact is then protected for one of them, which is not protected for persons generally,
by the other being required to act or forbear in certain ways different from
