Excerpts from Legal Documents 803
- *Decrees or other measures of higher authority, which have issued in con-
tested cases without judicial cognizance, create neither rights nor obligations. - *Particular favors, privileges and exceptions to the law, arising from the action
of the sovereign, are valid only so far as the particular rights of a third party are not
thereby injured. - The laws of the state bind all its members without difference of estate, rank
or family. - Privileges and grants of liberty, in doubtful cases, must be so interpreted as
to do the least damage to third parties. - *The welfare of the state in general, and of its inhabitants in particular, is the
aim of civil society and the general objective of the laws. - *The laws and ordinances of the state should restrict the natural liberty and
rights of citizens no further than the general welfare demands. - Every inhabitant of the state has a right to demand its protection for his
person and property. - No one therefore is entitled to obtain his rights by his own powers.
- The rights of man arise from his birth, from his estate, and from actions and
arrangements with which the laws have associated a certain determinate effect. - The general rights of man are grounded on the natural liberty to seek and
further his own welfare, without injury to the rights of another. - The particular rights and duties of members of the state rest upon the per-
sonal relationship in which each stands to others and to the state itself. - Rights which are not supported by the laws are called imperfect, and give no
ground for complaints or pleas in court. - Actions forbidden by neither natural nor positive law are called per-
missible.
Part I: Title I: Of Persons and Their Rights in General- Man is called a person so far as he enjoys certain rights in civil society.
- Civil society consists of a number of smaller societies and estates, bound to-
gether by Nature or Law, or by both. - Persons to whom, by their birth, destination or principal occupation, equal
rights are ascribed in civil society, make up together an estate of the state. - Members of each estate have, as such, and considered as individuals, certain
rights and duties. - The rights and duties of various societies in the state are further defined by
their relation to each other and to the supreme head of the state.
Part II: Title IX: On the Duties and Rights of the Noble Estate- The nobility, as the first estate in the state, most especially bears the obliga-
tion, by its distinctive destination, to maintain the defense of the state, both of its
honor without and of its constitution within.