Capitis Deminutio

In Roman legal terminology, caput primarily meant a person or human being. In a derivative sense the term denoted an individual’s privileges as a free person, as a member of a family and as a holder of certain social and political rights.

The term status referred to the position a person occupied in the community by virtue of his caput. The loss or impairment of an individual’s social and political rights was known as capitis deminutio and entailed a curtailment or change of status (status permutatio). The Roman jurists distinguished between three forms or degrees of capitis deminutio: maxima, media (or minor) and minima.^{^[167]}

Capitis deminutio maxima was the loss of personal liberty, which also entailed a loss of citizenship and family ties. A Roman citizen could be sold into slavery if he committed certain grave offences, including offences connected with military service (such as desertion to an enemy) or for wilfully avoiding enrolment in the censor’s books in order to evade taxation.^{^[168]}

A capitis deminutio media (or minor) entailed loss of citizenship but no loss of freedom. In early times, this occurred when a man went into exile or became a member of a foreign state. Under the Empire, a sentence of deportation (deportatio) to an island had the same effect.^{^[169]}

Finally, the capitis deminutio minima involved an alteration in a family relationship which occurred when a person’s family ties were dissolved either by their entry into another family (by adoption, adrogation or the cum manu marriage of a woman) or by becoming sui iuris and the head of a new family following his emancipation.

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Source: Mousourakis G.. Fundamentals of Roman Private Law. Springer, 2012.— 366 p.. 2012

Capitis Deminutio

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