permission is then needed to limit the scope of this prohibition, and to that purpose
an explicit permission is necessary.
Such an explicit permission can take the shape of a more specific rule, which is an
exception to the general prohibition (E.g. “Police officers are allowed to use proportionate
violence in the exercise of their function”). It can also take the shape of an individual
permission, such as a construction license provided to a citizen who wants to build a home
for his family.Permission and Competence Two concepts that are easily confused are those of
permission and competence. Nevertheless, there are clear differences between the
two. Permission has to do with what a person is allowed to do. Any kind of action
can be the object of permission. Moreover, if one does what was not permitted, the
result is that one acted unlawfully.
Competence, on the contrary, has nothing to do with what is allowed; it deals
with what ispossible. Competence is a precondition for the intentional creation of
legal effectsby means of a juridical act. If one tries to perform a juridical act for
which one lacks the required competence, one will normally not succeed in
bringing about these effects. Still, the attempt to do so does not have to be illegal.
For instance, if an ordinary citizen tries to create a statute, this is not necessarily illegal, but
an attempt to do so will lack the intended consequences (the legislation will be considered
non-existent or void) because ordinary citizens lack the required competence.3.5.2 Rights
There are different kinds of rights, which differ considerably from each other. If one
seeks a common denominator for the different kinds of rights, there are two
characteristics that most (but not all) rights share:
- rights are interests that are protected by law,
- rights can be disposed of by the right holder.
The different kinds of rights can, with some good will, be grouped under three
headings, that is, rights regarding a person (rights in personamor claims), rights
regarding an “object” (rights in rem, from the Roman word “res,” which means
“object” or “thing”), and liberty rights.
3.5.2.1 Claims and Obligations
The rights that most closely correspond to an obligation are the rights regarding a
person or, more briefly, claims. Legal obligations are the result of events to which
the law, most often private law, attaches an obligation as its legal effect. Typical
examples of such events are contracts and the unlawful events that are grouped
together under the denominator “torts.”
A tort is an illegal act, such as one that causes a traffic accident. If the tort caused damage,
the tortfeasor (the agent) will have to compensate for it. (Tort Law is discussed more fully
in Chap. 6 .)46 J. Hage