Features and types of legal relations
A legal relation is a social relation that is regulated by a rule of law. Its features:
- It arises on the basis of a legal norm.
- It links parties with rights and duties: your right matches the other's duty.
- It usually depends on the will of the parties (but not always, e.g. a crime).
- The state protects it and can enforce it.
Types (by different questions):
- Absolute (right against all, e.g. ownership) vs relative (right against a named person, e.g. a loan).
- Regulatory (set up normal rights and duties) vs protective (arise after a breach, e.g. compensation).
- Simple (one right, one duty) vs complex (many rights and duties on both sides, e.g. a sale with delivery and warranty).
- By branch of law: civil, criminal, labour, family and so on.
Subjects, objects and content
Subjects are the parties: natural persons (human beings), legal persons (companies, schools) and sometimes the state or a local authority.
The object is what the relation is about: things (a bike, a flat), money, services (a repair), results of creative work (a song) and personal non-property goods (name, honour).
The content has two sides. The subjective right is what a party may do or demand. The legal duty is what the other must do or not do. They always come in pairs: the buyer's right to the bike is the seller's duty to hand it over.
Legal facts
A legal fact is a real-life circumstance that the law links with the arising, change or end of a legal relation.
- Actions (done by will): lawful ones like signing a contract, and unlawful ones like causing harm.
- Events (outside anyone's will): birth, death, a flood, passing of time (limitation period).
Sometimes one fact is not enough. The "legal composition" is a set of facts together, for example for inheritance: a death + a will + the heir accepting.
Legal capacity and capability
Legal capacity is the ability to have rights and duties. A natural person has it from birth until death (a baby can own property by inheritance). A legal person has it from registration until it is closed.
Capability (capacity to act) is the ability to use rights and take on duties by your own actions, for example to sign a contract. It depends on age and mental condition. A common pattern (the exact ages vary by country): children below about 6 act through their parents; children from about 6 to 13 can make small everyday deals; teenagers from about 14 to 17 have a limited capability and need parental consent for bigger deals; at 18 a person has full capability (sometimes earlier by marriage or work). A court can limit the capability of a person with a serious mental illness.
There is also delictual capability: the ability to answer for harm you cause.
Key formulas and definitions
- Legal relation = subjects + object + content (right โ duty)
- Legal facts: actions (by will) + events (not by will)
- Capacity (has rights): from birth ยท Capability (acts): grows with age
Worked examples
1. Anu sells her bicycle to Ravi for โน5000. Name subjects, object and content.
Subjects: Anu (seller) and Ravi (buyer). Object: the bicycle (and the money). Content: Ravi's right to get the bike and Anu's duty to hand it over; Anu's right to โน5000 and Ravi's duty to pay.
2. Is a death a legal fact? Is signing a contract?
Both are legal facts. A death is an <em>event</em> (not by will). Signing a contract is a lawful <em>action</em> (by will).
3. A 10-year-old inherits a flat. Does she have capacity? Capability?
Capacity: yes, from birth, so she can be the owner. Capability: limited at that age, so her parents or guardians act for her, for example to sell or rent.
Common mistakes
- Mixing up capacity and capability. Capacity = can have rights; capability = can use them by your own acts.
- Forgetting that rights and duties come in pairs. One side's right is the other side's duty.
- Thinking only people can be parties. Companies and the state can be subjects too.
- Thinking every event is a legal fact. Only those the law links to a relation count (rain, for example, is not, unless a law attaches a result to it).