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# Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning

## Details

**Authors** Hohfeld, Wesley Newcomb

**Year** 1917

**Publisher** The Yale Law Journal

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Law & Jurisprudence

**Applied** false

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.2307/786270) 
10.2307/786270

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To clarify the fundamental jural relations used in judicial reasoning and to expose the confusion caused by loose legal terminology, in particular the in personam and in rem classification of rights.

### How they did it (methods)

Analytical argument supported by quotations from judicial opinions and legal treatises.

### What they found (results)

Hohfeld presents a scheme of eight jural conceptions arranged as opposites and correlatives: right, privilege, power and immunity, opposed respectively to no-right, duty, disability and liability, with each conception also paired with a correlative. He argues that all rights and duties are relations among persons, so a right in rem is a right against persons generally and not against a thing. A so-called multital right is in fact a set of separate right-duty relations, each with its own duty-holder and each capable of changing independently. He proposes replacing in personam and in rem with the terms paucital and multital, and criticizes courts and treatises for using the old terms inconsistently.

## Commentary

### In short

The scheme defines each legal conception by what it is opposed to and what it corresponds to, which is a distinction-based analysis. Its central claim is that legal rights are relations between persons, and that an apparently single relation to the world at large is many separate relations. The work thus rests on both distinction and relationship.

**Patterns it shows** D, R

Formal proof or model

**Added** 2026-10-10

**How to cite this** Hohfeld, Wesley Newcomb (1917). Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning. The Yale Law Journal.