JUS PRIVATUM. The municipal law of the Romans as distinguished from the jus publicum, which was the law of political con ditions and of crimes (with that of criminal procedure). Campbell's Analysis of Austin, 143.
"The relations of power subsisting between per sons and the world of things, or the equivalents of things, are the subject-matter of private law. Pri vate law, in other words, has to do with the domin ion of persons over things. Its pith is, therefore, contained in the law of property. The subject-mat ter of public law are the relations of power which subsist between persons and persons. Here, the power is ideal, in the sense that its object is the free-will of another, i. e. something invisible and outwardly intangible. Public law, then, has to do with the dominion of persons over persons. The rights of control with which such private law is concerned are reducible to a money value ; the rights of control with which public law is concern ed are not thus reducible. In private law, again,
the subject of a right appears in his individual ca pacity, as commanding the world of material things. In public law, on the other hand, the subject of a right appears in his capacity as a member of a community which it is his part to serve in order that he may share in the benefits it confers. Fi nally, as against their object, the rights of private law merely confer a power, the rights of public law, on the other hand, impose, at the same time, a duty on the person to whom the right pertains. The distinction is clearly exemplified in the case of the right of ownership in a thing, on one side, and the right of a sovereign over his people on the oth er." Bohm, Inst. Rom. L. § 7.