/3/
The commentator Godefroi tersely adds that there are two such
conditions, slavery and freedom; and his antithesis is as old as
Cicero. /4/ So, in another passage, Celsus asks, What else are
the rights attaching to land but qualities of that land? /5/ So
Justinian's Institutes speak of servitudes which inhere in
buildings. /6/ So Paulus [384] speaks of such rights as being
accessory to bodies. "And thus," adds Godefroi, "rights may
belong to inanimate things." /1/ It easily followed from all this
that a sale of the dominant estate carried existing easements,
not because the buyer succeeded to the place of the seller, but
because land is bound to land. /2/
All these figures import that land is capable of having rights,
as Austin recognizes. Indeed, he even says that the land "is
erected into a legal or fictitious person, and is styled
'praedium dominans.'" /3/ But if this means anything more than to
explain what is implied by the Roman metaphors, it goes too far.
The dominant estate was never "erected into a legal person,"
either by conscious fiction or as a result of primitive beliefs.
/4/ It could not sue or be sued, like a ship in the admiralty. It
is not supposed that its possessor could maintain an action for
an interference with an easement before his time, as an heir
could for an injury to property of the hereditas jacens.
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