Article III: On the Subjects of Civil Law

St. Thomas, I-II, q. 96, a. 5 and 6.

290. Principle. To civil laws are obligated all and only the subjects of the power bearing the law, habitually endowed with the use of reason, for whom the law was borne. - Hence according to St. Thomas: a) the perfect also are subject to human law insofar as it is the rule of human acts, because thus natural and divine law also establishes, as the Church defined against the Beghards and Beguines, condemned in the Council of Vienne (a. 3); b) nevertheless, as to the coercive force of law, the just and virtuous whose will is consonant with law are not subject, but only the wicked whose will is discordant from the law.

291. Personal and territorial laws.

Some laws are personal, which immediately affect persons and are concerned principally with their state and capacity (lois qui composent le statut personnel: nationalite, capacite, majorite, filiation, etat civil), and accessorily with goods: to these probably pertain laws concerning movable goods, which are judged to adhere to persons. Others are territorial, which immediately affect the territory of society and mediately persons insofar as they pertain to the territory; among these are numbered real laws, which are concerned principally with immovable goods and accessorily with persons, laws which determine the forms and execution of acts, because acts are to be constituted and executed according to the laws of the place in which they are constituted or committed to execution, according to the principle: place rules the act; laws regarding the external order and public tranquility of the territory and the security of persons and dominions (lois de police et de surete), to which pertain laws which punish delicts.

292. Various persons are subject to laws in various ways.

In the territory there can be:

1. Citizens or nationals, who are members of society, whether by birth, by law, by adoption, or by annexation: a) those present in the territory are held by all laws; b) those absent are held by personal laws (Civil Code, a. 3, § 3), but are not held per se by territorial laws, for example, concerning public order or the form of contracts; c) nevertheless they are held per accidens, if they are morally present by reason of goods which they possess in the territory for real laws, or by reason of an action or omission which they exercise there, for example, for fulfilling offices toward society, or if by fiction of law they are present by reason of a delict exercised against a fellow citizen: for this is judged to be done in the territory of the community.

2. Strangers, who are not members of the community, but have domicile or residence in the territory or pass through it. Now, because they are not members of the community, a) they are not held by personal laws; b) nor per se by territorial laws; c) nevertheless per accidens they are held, either 1) by reason of the common good, to laws which regard order (Civil Code, a. 3, § 1) or which have been specially borne for them, or 2) by reason of goods which they possess there for real laws (Civil Code, a. 3, § 2), or 3) by reason of an act which they exercise, do, or execute there, for laws which determine the form or execution of contracts (place rules the act), or 4) by reason of a delict which they commit there, for laws which establish penalty; d) if they are absent they are held only by laws which are concerned with goods possessed by them, or by reason of a crime perpetrated against society (at least if they are not sufficiently punished by their own superior).

3. Exempt persons, who by fiction of law are judged outside the territory and are withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the place. They are a) by human right: princes of other nations dwelling in it for any cause whatsoever; likewise their ambassadors with their attendants and domestics; b) from divine and ecclesiastical right: the Roman Pontiff as to all; clerics and religious for those things which are opposed to their dignity and office (concerning which it pertains to the Church to judge); for other things today they are held even directly by force of the laws themselves.

4. Whether the legislator himself is subject to law is no longer a practical question, because there is not a singular legislator; whence all who have concurred in the making of the law are subject to it. Nevertheless, as to the coercive force, the person of the king himself is exempt, and for that reason is declared inviolable (Belgian Constitution, a. 63).