6. CAPITIS DEMINUTIO
Three elements may be seen in a man’s status in Roman law —liberty, citizenship, and family rights—and changes of status may be analysed accordingly.
The Romans speak in this connexion of capitis deminutio, or deterioration of status. Capitis deminutio maxima is the loss of all three elements, i.e. enslavement; capitis deminutio media is the loss of citizenship and family rights, usually as a punishment; and capitis deminutio minima, the most common, is the loss merely of family rights by either adoption, adrogation, marriage with manus, or emancipation. Some of these hardly seem to us to constitute a deterioration of status. For example, a filiusfamilias who is adopted from one family into another undergoes no change of status, and one who is emancipated achieves a higher status. But in each case there is a breaking of agnatic family ties and a loss of rights. The adopted son ceases to be a member of his original family and loses his civil law rights of succession in that family, though he acquires corresponding rights in his new family. The emancipated son loses his rights in his original family without acquiring any others, since he becomes the first head of a new family; he is a new person and can have no agnatic relatives except such children as are later born to him. On the other hand, a son who becomes sui iuris by the death of his father undergoes no capitis deminutio and retains his agnatic rights of succession.The idea that a new person had taken the place of the old produced other consequences also. Life interests (usufruct and usus) were terminated, though Justinian restricted this result to capitis deminutio maxima and media, where the analogy with death was more obvious. A will previously made was no longer valid. Contractual obligations were dissolved, but the possibilities of injustice and fraud in this were obvious, and various forms of relief were devised.
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