Sui Iuris - Secular Law

Secular Law

In civil law the phrase sui juris indicates legal competence, the capacity to manage one’s own affairs (Black's Law Dictionary, Oxford English Dictionary). It also indicates an entity that is capable of suing and/or being sued in a legal proceeding in its own name without the need of an ad litem. It also relates to customary, unique rights afforded to an individual unequal and exceptional, per feudal prerogative legal structures (that were additionally in personam and so legally reciprocal at the scale of personhood, effectively accruing constituencies polity by individuation).

Thus in Roman law the caregiver or guardian of a spendthrift (prodigus) or of a person of unsound mind (furiosus), and, particularly, one who takes charge of the estate of an adolescens, i.e., of a person sui juris, above the age of a pupillus, fourteen or twelve years (boys and girls, respectively), and below the full age of twenty-five. Such persons were known as minors, i.e., minores viginti quinque annis. While the tutor, the guardian of the pupillus, was said to be appointed for the care of the person, the curator took charge of the property.

The English word “autonomous” is derived from the Ancient Greek αυτονόμος (from autos - self, and nomos - law) which corresponds to the Latin "sui iuris".