16 
Indiana University Studies 
generally, and finally privacy. This social interest also came 
to be protected criminally by giving to the state analogous 
public rights. The social interest in the general security of 
personality so far as it relates to honor and reputation is 
protected civilly by the private right of reputation and crim- 
inally by an analogous public right. Some social interests, 
like promised advantages, are protected by private rights only. 
Other social interests, like general morals and the conserva- 
tion of social resources, are for the most part protected by 
public rights. Still other social interests are not protected 
by rights, but by privileges, powers, or immunities. The so- 
cial interest in the freedom of the will is generally protected 
by the privilege of avoiding a contract. The economic exist- 
ence is often protected by powers and immunities and priv- 
ileges as well as by rights. However, the most important 
legal capacities are legal rights, and social interests are gen- 
erally protected by them. The curricula of our law schools 
and most law books are mostly concerned with legal rights. 
A scheme of social control which accomplishes its purposes by 
means of legal capacities is a roundabout scheme, but since 
it is the way of the law it must be considered if we would 
understand law. 
With the exception of infants, insane persons, and certain 
other persons under disability, the law% it is said, has given 
to natural persons full legal capacity, that is, they have or 
may have all the rights, tho not all the privileges, powers, 
and immunities, known to the law. Corporations have only 
the legal capacity given to them expressly or impliedly by 
their charters of incorporation. A sovereign state has legal 
capacity against persons, but persons do not have legal ca- 
pacity against it except as it has given its consent. 
Correlative with the capacity, or ability, to influence the 
conduct of others is the liability to have such conduct in- 
fluenced. Thus correlative with every right is a duty; with 
every privilege, a no right ; with every power, a no privilege ; 
and with every immunity, a no power. Normal adult nat- 
ural persons have full legal liability, and this is sometimes 
what is meant when it is said that they have full legal ca- 
pacity. It has already been pointed out that corporations 
do not have full legal capacity. They also do not have full 
legal liability. They have incapacities differing from those 
