“The field of law strictly so-called”, observes Holland “may be exhaustively divided between the law which regulates rights between subject and subject, (civis and civis) that which regulates rights between the state and its subjects (civitas and civis).
But there is a third kind of law which it is for many reasons convenient to co-ordinate with the two former kinds, although it can indeed be described as law only by courtesy, since the rights with which it is concerned cannot properly be described as legal. It is that body of rules, usually described as International Law, which regulates the rights which prevail between slate (civitas and civitas).”
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According to this statement of Holland law can be divided into:
1. Private law.
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2. Public law.
3. International law.
These three departments into which law may be divided, it must be borne in mind that what is not very happily described as Municipal Law in its two departments ‘Private’ and ‘Public’ is alone properly so-called, while ‘International law’ is law only by analogy.
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From another point of view Holland divides law into:
1. Law of persons, and
2. Law of things.
“There are some rights,” he observes, “in which the status of the persons concerned has to be specially taken into consideration while in others this is not the ease.” This distinction has led him to a division of law into “the law of persons” and “the law of things.”
The Law of Persons, as a source of variety in rights, is distinct from, and much smaller than, the residue of the law called the Law of Things.
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The aggregate of rights may be likened to a figure of two dimensions: the shorter of these dimensions representing the Law of Persons; the longer the Law of Things. The figure may be supposed to be as follows:
The personality recognised in the law of persons is such as modifies indefinitely the legal relations into which the individual clothed with the personality may enter.
Of such affections of personality there are two classes:
(1) The person may be ‘artificial’, i.e., may not be a human being.
(2) The person may be under disability, or may enjoy exemption, on account of age. Sex, mental incapacity, crime, alien age, or public station.
“The contrast between the law of persons and of things or between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ law, i.e., the law of normal and of abnormal persons, is sharply defined only in one of the departments into which the whole subject may be divided in accordance with this threefold distinction, though something analogous to it may be detected in others.
“In Private Law, where all characteristics of law are fully present, the law of persons is a statement of the ways in which the general law is modified by varieties of status; while the law of things is a description of the various kinds of rights enjoyed in private capacities by persons as being within the jurisdiction of a state, but not as being in any way representative of the sovereign power in the state.”
In Public Law, what is analogous to the Law of Persons consists in a description of the state as a whole, of its ruling body, or bodies of persons enjoying delegated ruling power, and of its constituent members as such; in short, in what is usually known as ‘constitutional’ law. The residue of Public Law has its analogies to the Law of Things. It consists in, observes Holland.
(1) A description of the way in which the different delegacies of the governing body are set in motion. This may be called ‘administrative’ law.
(2) A description of those rights of the community at large which are violated by injuries done to it as a whole, or to any member of it, and of the punishments with which infractions of such rights are vested. This is commonly called ‘criminal’ or Penal, law; because the usual mode of suiting and circumscribing such rights is by defining violations of them, and by proscribing the punishments due to such violations.
“Out of each of the four grand divisions of rights”, observes Holland, “there arises also a grand division of law”. Including therefore the distinction between ‘subsuintive’ and “adjective” law we have live main principles upon which the field of law may be divided, viz., into.
I. Substantive and Adjective law.
II. Private, Public and International law.
III. Normal and Abnormal law.
IV. The law of rights ‘in rem’ and of rights ‘in personam.
V. The law of rights ‘antecedent’ and of rights ‘remedial’.
He continues to observe that adopting as the primary division of rights that which turns upon the distinction between the political or non-political equality of the persons with whom they are connected; we shall divide law, in the first instance, into—
1. Private
2. Public, and
3. International.