PepengAgimat
Well-known Netizen
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In rem jurisdiction over a man or woman can only exist if the man or woman is a slave, i.e., property or res (an object), in which case his or her disposition at law is no different than if he or she were a horse or other goods. See THE ZONG (GREGSON V. GILBERT), 99 E.R. 3:233 (K.B. 1783). In nature, in rem jurisdiction is exercised over men and women by their Creator (God), exclusively. Governments can therefore gain only a fictional in rem jurisdiction over men by creating various legal devices (personas) for those men to assume limited control of (e.g., citizen, taxpayer, driver, etc.). Since the device is legal fiction, a falsehood made true by force of law, this persona is in-fact a legal object or res. Just as in theatre, the persona (“person”) is separate from the man or woman playing the part; therefore, there may be artificial persons, but not artificial men; natural persons, but not natural men. AMERICAN LAW & PROCEDURE, vol. XIII, ch. V, § 65, pp. 156-157:
“The word ‘person’ defined. Gaius (Emperor Caligula?) says ‘De juris divisione’ (the divisions of law) immediately preceding his division of the law; then follows, ‘De conditione hominum’ (meaning the condition or status of men).
“In the Institutes ‘De jura personarum’ precedes the expression ‘all our [civil] law relates either to persons, or to things, or to actions.’ The words persona and personae did not have the meaning in the Roman which attaches to homo, the individual, or a man in the English; it had peculiar reference to artificial beings, and the condition or status of individuals.” [Citations omitted; bold and italics emphasis added.]
We then get the modern application and its implications:
“. . . The word ‘person,’ in its primitive and natural sense, signifies the mask with which actors, who played dramatic pieces in Rome and Greece, covered their heads. These pieces were played in public places, and afterwards in such vast amphitheatres that it was impossible for a man to make himself heard by all the spectators [and later by all judges]. Recourse was had to art; the head of each actor was enveloped with a mask, the figure of which represented the part he was to play, and it was so contrived that the opening for the emission of his voice made the sounds clearer and more resounding, vox peronabat, when the name persona was given to the instrument or mask which facilitated the resounding of his [legal] voice. The name persona was afterwards applied to the part
itself which the actor had undertaken to play, because the face of the mask was adopted to the age and character of him who was considered as speaking, and sometimes it was his own portrait. It is in this last sense of personage, or of the part which an individual plays, that the word persona is employed in jurisprudence, in opposition to the word man, homo. When we speak of a person, we only consider the state of the man, the part he plays in society, abstractly, without considering the individual.” 1 Bouv. Inst., note 1. [Bold and italics emphasis, and bracket information added.]
“The word ‘person’ defined. Gaius (Emperor Caligula?) says ‘De juris divisione’ (the divisions of law) immediately preceding his division of the law; then follows, ‘De conditione hominum’ (meaning the condition or status of men).
“In the Institutes ‘De jura personarum’ precedes the expression ‘all our [civil] law relates either to persons, or to things, or to actions.’ The words persona and personae did not have the meaning in the Roman which attaches to homo, the individual, or a man in the English; it had peculiar reference to artificial beings, and the condition or status of individuals.” [Citations omitted; bold and italics emphasis added.]
We then get the modern application and its implications:
“. . . The word ‘person,’ in its primitive and natural sense, signifies the mask with which actors, who played dramatic pieces in Rome and Greece, covered their heads. These pieces were played in public places, and afterwards in such vast amphitheatres that it was impossible for a man to make himself heard by all the spectators [and later by all judges]. Recourse was had to art; the head of each actor was enveloped with a mask, the figure of which represented the part he was to play, and it was so contrived that the opening for the emission of his voice made the sounds clearer and more resounding, vox peronabat, when the name persona was given to the instrument or mask which facilitated the resounding of his [legal] voice. The name persona was afterwards applied to the part
itself which the actor had undertaken to play, because the face of the mask was adopted to the age and character of him who was considered as speaking, and sometimes it was his own portrait. It is in this last sense of personage, or of the part which an individual plays, that the word persona is employed in jurisprudence, in opposition to the word man, homo. When we speak of a person, we only consider the state of the man, the part he plays in society, abstractly, without considering the individual.” 1 Bouv. Inst., note 1. [Bold and italics emphasis, and bracket information added.]
