LSU Law: Digest of 1808

BOOK I - OF PERSONS

TITLE I - OF THE DISTINCTION OF PERSONS, AND THE PRIVATION OF CERTAIN CIVIL RIGHTS IN CERTAIN CASES

CHAPTER I - OF THE DISTINCTION OF PERSONS ESTABLISHED BY NATURE

Art. 1. The sex alone which distinguishes men from women, establishes some essential differences between them, with respect to their civil, social and political rights.

Art. 2. Whilst men are capable of all kinds of engagements and functions, unless disqualified by reasons and causes applying to particular individuals only, women are, by their sex alone, rendered incapable of various civil engagements and functions; thus, for example, women cannot exercise the offices of magistrate or representative, nor have they a right to elect or to be elected representatives of the people.

Art. 3. Birth subjects children to the power and authority of those of whom they are born. The extent of this subjection on the one hand, and authority on the other, will be explained in its place.

Art. 4. Children are legitimate or bastards; legitimate children are those who are born of a marriage lawfully contracted. And bastards are such as are born of an illicit union.

Art. 5. Children born dead are considered as if they had never been born or conceived.

Art. 6. Abortive children are such as by an untimely birth, are either born dead or incapable of living.

Art. 7. Children in their mother's womb, cannot be reckoned among the number of children, not even for the purpose of imparting to the father, the rights and advantages which the law may grant to parents on account of the number of their children.
Yet the hope that such children may be born alive, causes them to be considered, in whatever relates to themselves, as if they were already born; thus the inheritances which fall to them, before their birth, and which belong to them, are kept for them, and curators are assigned to take care of their estates for their benefit.

Art. 8. Posthumous children are children born after the death of their father.

Art. 9. Persons of insane mind, are those who do not enjoy the exercise and use of reason, after they have arrived at the age, at which they ought to possess it, whether the defect results from nature or accident. This defect disqualifies those who are subject to it, from contracting any species of engagement, or from managing their own estates, which are consequently placed under the direction of a curator.

Art. 10. Persons who are both deaf and dumb, or those who by reason of other infirmities, are incapable of managing their own affairs, have their persons and estates placed under the direction of curators.

Art. 11. Persons laboring under the disabilities stated in the two preceding articles, do not loose particular advantages derived from other circumstances. They retain their estates, their capacity for inheriting, and such branches of the paternal power, as are compatible with their situations.

Art. 12. Age forms a distinction between those who have and those who have not sufficient reason and experience to govern themselves, and to be masters of their own conduct;- But as nature does not always impart the same maturity and strength of judgment at the same age, the law determines the period at which persons are sufficiently advanced in life, to be capable of contracting marriage, and of forming other engagements.

CHAPTER II - OF THE DISTINCTIONS OF PERSONS WHICH ARE ESTABLISHED BY LAW

Art. 13. A slave is one who is in the power of a master and who belongs to him in such a manner, that the master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry and his labor, and who can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any thing, but what must belong to his master.

Art. 14. Manumitted persons are those who having been once slaves, are legally made free.

Art. 15. Free men are those who have preserved their natural liberty, which consists in a right to do whatever one pleases, except in so far as one is restrained by law.

Art. 16. The sons and daughters of a family are persons who are subject to the father's authority; and the fathers or mothers of family, who are called likewise heads of family, are persons who are not subject to the said authority, whether they have children of their own or not and whether they have been freed from the father's authority, by emancipation or by the death of the father.

Art. 17. Emancipation and the other ways which free the son or daughter of family, from the father's authority, regard only the effects which the civil law gives to the paternal power, but changes in no respect those that are derived from natural right.

Art. 18. Males who have not attained the age of fourteen years compleat and females who are under twelve are called impuberes; and sons who have attained fourteen years compleat and daughters the age of twelve compleat, are distinguished by the name of Adults.

Art. 19. Minors are those of both sexes who have not yet attained the age of one and twenty years compleat, and they remain under the direction of tutors or curators till that age;- when they have arrived at it, they are then said to be of full age or majors.

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