Roman Law
Under Roman law, ownership of a building was considered inseparable from ownership of the land beneath it. A person with the right to use the land for a superficies, known as a superficarius, enjoyed a right to use the superficies, bequeath it to his heirs and encumber it, despite not "owning" it outright. The right was known as a Jus Superficiarium.
Read more about this topic: Superficies
Famous quotes containing the words roman and/or law:
“Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato,—at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The Law of Triviality ... briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.”
—C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993)