Rei vindicatio

The classical rei vindicatio was an action by which the plaintiff, on the strength of his quiritary ownership, demanded the restitution of a thing from the defendant who had the thing in his possession.

The function of it was the same as it is today in most modern legal systems. The Roman specification of a thing in court, however, was considerably different from ours. As far as the thing was concerned, the parties in this type of judicial protection had to be more careful than we should today. There would be not a chance for a party to win the case if he'd neglect specifying the thing concerned.

At least at the theoretical level, Roman jurists used to divide the concept 'thing' into three subconcepts, that is, corpus unitum, corpus coniunctum and corpus ex distantibus. Among these three, the most disputed theme was corpus ex distantibus, because it is not a usual 'one' thing, but a bundle of independent things like a herd of cattle. Cattle were such a important means to live with in Roman society that Roman jurists developed the regulation on cattle on a full scale.

At Rome two law schools which influenced since the late Republic flourished throughout the classical period. Most modern romanists admit that these schools were more or less tinted by the colors of Greek philosophy. They say the Sabinian school was the student of Stoicism, meanwhile the Proculian Aristotle or Peripateticism. Especially we can easily find out Greek nature theories in classical roman legal science on accession and specification(not in the usual sense). Sabinians, following Stoicism, argued that in these areas hyle supercedes, not eidos. To this argument a strong counter-argument came and struck from Proculians, who took eidos for the decisive factor for a fate of a thing.

Although there's little in Roman legal sources that would show us any clear evidence for philosophical influence on classical Roman discussions among jurists, we can presume the relationship between Rome and Greece and try to reach a more articulate conception of Roman law.

A Study on the Thing as the Object of Rei Vindicatio: Seong, Dschung Mo