FEUDAL LA

FEUDAL LAW. By this phrase is understood a political system which placed men 
and estates under hierarchical and multiplied distinctions of lords and 
vassals. The principal features of this system were the following. 
     2. The right to all lands was vested in the sovereign. These were, 
parcelled out among the great men of the nation by its chief, to be held of 
him, so that the king had the Dominum directum, and the grantee or vassal, 
had what was called Dominum utile. It was a maxim nulle terre sans seigneur. 
These tenants were bound to perform services to the king, generally of a 
military character. These great lords again granted parts of the lands. they 
thus acquired, to other inferior vassals, who held under them, and were 
bound to perform services to the lord. 
     3. The principles of the feudal law will be found in Littleton's 
Tenures Wright's Tenures; 2 Blackstone's Com. c. 5 Dalrymple's History of 
Feudal Property; Sullivan's Lectures; Book of Fiefs; Spellman, Treatise of 
Feuds and Tenures; Le Grand Coutumier; the Salic Laws; The Capitularies; Les 
Establissements de St. Louis; Assizes de Jerusalem; Poth. Des Fiefs. Merl. 
Rep. Feodalite; Dalloz, Dict. Feodalit 6; Guizot, Essais sur I'Histoire de 
France, Essai 5eme. 
     4. In the United States the feudal law never was in its full vigor, 
though some of its principles are still retained. "Those principles are so 
interwoven with every part of our jurisprudence," says Ch. J. Tilghman, 3 S. 
& R. 447, "that to attempt to eradicate them would be to destroy the whole. 
They are massy stones worked into the foundation of our legal edifice. Most 
of the inconveniences attending them, have been removed, and the few that 
remain can be easily removed, by acts of the legislature." See 3 Kent, Com. 
509, 4th ed.