In French law . Right, justice, equity, law, the whole body of law; also a right.This term exhibits the same ambiguity which Is discoverable in the German equivalent.”rccht” and the English word “right.” On the one hand, these terms answer to theRoman “jus,” and thus indicate law in the abstract, considered as the foundation of allrights, or the complex of underlying moral principles which impart the character ofjustice to all positive law , or give it an ethical content. Taken in this abstract sense, theterms may be adjectives, in which case they are equivalent to “just,” or nouns, In whichcase they may be paraphrased by the expressions “justice,” “morality,” or “equity.” Onthe other hand, they serve to point out a right; that is, a power, privilege, faculty, ordemand, inherent in one person, and incident upon another. In the latter signification ,droit (or recht or right) is the correlative of “duty” or ” obligation .” In the former sense,It may be considered as opposed to wrong, injustice, or the absence of law. Droit hasthe further ambiguity that it is sometimes used to denote the existing body of law considered as one whole, or the sum total of a number of Individuallaws taken together. See Jus; RECIIT; RIGHT.
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