In Civil Law. The name of a rural servitude which per- mits digging on the land of another. Inst. 2, 3, 2; Dig. 8, 8, 1, 1. A similar right was recognized in early English law; Bract. 222. JUS GENTIUM (Lat.). The law of nations. It has been said that although the Romans used these words in the sense we attach to law of nations, yet among them the sense was much more extended. Falck, Encyc. Jur. 102, n. 42. It has been termed a system made up by the early Roman law- yers of the common ingredients in the customs of the old Italian tribes, for the purpose of adjudicating questions arising in Rome between foreigners or natives and foreigners. Maine, Anc. Law 49. The jus gentium is differently character- ized by the later writers on the civil law from the meaning given to the phrase by the earlier writers who treated it, as more identical with the idea of modern inter- national law than it is now considered to have been. The distinction between the jus gentium and the jus civile is thus admirably expressed: "The jus gentium, on the other hand, came to be regarded as a universal law of all mankind, common to all na- tions, because resting on the nature of things and the general sense of equity which obtains among all men, the 'jus gentium quod apud omnes gentes peræque custoditur, a a sort of natural law, exacting recognition everywhere in virtue of its inherent reasonableness. It would, however, be erroneous to suppose that the Romans attempted to introduce a code of nature such as the philosophers had devised. The jus gentium was, and never had been anything else but a portion of positive Roman law, which commercial usage and other sources of law, more especially the prætorian edict (q. v.), had clothed in a concrete form. Nor again must it be imagined that the Romans simply transferred a portion of foreign (Hellenic) law bodily into their own system. In the few quite quite exceptional cases where they did so (as e. g. in the case of hypotheca), they did not fail to impress their institutions with a national Roman character. The antithesis between jus civile and jus gentium was merely the outward expression of the growing consciousness that Roman law, in ab- sorbing the element of greater freedom, was com- mencing to discard its national peculiarities and transform itself from the special local law of a city into a general law for the civilized world. The jus gentium was that part of the private law of Rome which was essentially in accordance with the private law of other nations, more especially with that of the Greeks, which would naturally predominate along the seaboard of the Mediterranean. In other words, jus gentium was that portion of the positive law of Rome which appeared to the Romans them- selves in the light of a ratio scripta, of a law which obtains among all nations and is common to all mankind." Sohm, Inst. Rom. L. $ 18. The origin of the jus gentium was un- doubtedly to be found in the adjustment of the Roman law to the relations existing be- tween Roman citizens and foreigners, and between foreigners themselves. The growth of a different system was a not unnatural result of the administration of law in cases where both parties were not Roman citi- zens, by the foreign prætors, who were not bound by the strict rules of the jus civile, but from going about from place to place, and administering a kind of equitable juris- diction in the settlement of disputes, they might not inaptly be termed peripatetic or itinerant arbitrators. The growth of a system of law administered by them along- side of the jus civile was not unlike the growth of the equity jurisprudence along- side of the common law. Then, too, the fact that these officers were constantly en- gaged in settling disputes, to which at least one party was a foreigner, naturally led to their becoming familiar with the principles of other systems of law, and in applying them to the case in hand, so far as they commended themselves to their sense of justice. The new system was afterwards extended to the whole non-citizen class. And while in the first instance it was treated as an entirely distinct system from the jus civile, it gradually supplanted the latter, and by a process which was origin- ally the absorption of much of the jus gen- tium into the jus civile, it subsequently be- came recognized as a constituent part of Roman Law, and was gradually welded into a complete system of jurisprudence. See Morey, Rom. L. 59-71; INTERNATIONAL LAW; JUS CIVILE; JUS NATURAL JUS GLADII (Lat. the right of the sword). Supreme jurisdiction. The right to absolve from or condemn a man to death. JUS HABENDI (Lat.). The right to have a thing. The right to be put into actual possession of property to which one is entitled.