Real

Real is a term used by lawyers to describe the nature of certain rights and actions. The rights of an owner of property are real rights—i.e. he has a right to claim some specific thing and hold it against all other persons. Contractual rights, on the other hand, are personal—i.e. they are good only against the person who is bound to perform the contract. Forms of action are classified according to the nature of the right which is in dispute. The Roman law gave an action in rem for the recovery of any thing, whether movable or immovable, which was withheld from the person entitled; an action in personam was the form in which compensation could be obtained for breach of contract or other wrongful act. In Scotland, and in other countries where the Roman law has been studied and followed, real rights and real actions are defined very much as they were defined by the civilians; England has taken a course of its own. At the time when the common law was taking shape land was of primary importance. The owner of chattels (movable things) was entitled to damages if his property was detained from him or converted to the use of another; but he had no real action to recover the thing itself. A real action was an action to recover land or some right connected with land. Some interests in land (e.g. the interest of a tenant under a lease) were regarded as personal rights against the owner; in technical language the interest of a tenant for years is a chattel real, or a chattel which savours of the realty. The English law of property frames all its rules with reference to these somewhat arbitrary distinctions. Thus, for example, on the death of an owner his real property passes at once to his heir or to the devisee named in his will; his personal property (including his chattels real) passes to his executor or administrator for distribution among the persons named in his will or the next-of-kin. Real property was formerly favoured in some points by the law, but modern legislation has made property of all kinds equally accessible to creditors, and the rules which apply to land have been considerably simplified and improved.