Sunday, January 27, 2013

For the lack of space avenditio was born

In my previous post  I talked how Paras omitted the negative prefix causing me a lot of headache in the process. This time Paras deleted the space between two words giving birth to an unknown term.

From page 1 of the Civil Code of the Philippines Annotated, Vol. V, 2013 Edition:


After defining sale, he delved into the history of the term and wrote that sale came from the Latin word avenditio. In another post  I discussed the difficulties of the claim of  Paras about the French and Spanish usage of the words a venta. In this post let's see how avenditio came into being.

Google Translate says that sale in Latin is venditionem or venditio. Not avenditionem nor avenditio.

Duhaime's Legal Dictionary translates venditio as a sale. Notice the space between the article and the noun.
Here's how Duhaime defines venditio:
A term of ancient Roman law but still reflected in the civil law and French language for which the verb for sale is vendre and the noun venteEven in English, a seller is known alternatively as a vendor. In Latin, a male seller is a venditor and a female, venditrix.
So how did Paras come up with avenditio? This passage from the book A Text-Book of Roman Law: From Augustus to Justinian  By W. W. Buckland may explain:


Or this footnote from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 4,  By Edward Gibbon:


The old editions of Paras contain the same word. I'd like to believe that this is just proofreading oversight. But who knows?

Sunday, January 20, 2013

For the lack of "un" the reader was lost

Prof. Darryl  Largo, we fondly called him "Bretch of Contract" for his second name,  recommended the book of De Leon for our Oblicon class. I already had Paras' book but in order to better follow the discussions I got De Leon's book. But I found De Leon's book to be dense in many parts, not to mention the typos, so Paras came in handy at times.

In our discussion of unenforceable contracts I relied mostly on Paras. That's where I got lost.

On Page 784, Civil Code of the Philippines, Annotated, Book IV, 2008 Edition, by Paras we have this:


No wonder I couldn't make heads and tails of the rest of the article and the exposition of Paras because of the absence of the negative prefix.

I know I should have cleared the problem by reading the context. But under Prof. Largo's class and my other classes in my previous universe we were always in a hurry because of the numerous jurisprudence to read in conjunction with an article. So you get through the codal provision, zero in on the article, and catch a glimpse of the author's thoughts on the matter.

In my current universe I have more time to do contextual reading. So I checked the 2013 Edition last week, see my post here, while buying another book at Rex Bookstore. The "un" was still lacking. And other readers of my type are bound to get lost.

Unless you are reading only De Leon under Prof. Largo.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Address Still Not Found

In one of my posts which can be read here, I mentioned how Reyes and Paras pointed  to wrong or already repealed articles. The books I referred to were the 2008 editions. So perhaps they could have edited the wrong references by now.

I was buying this book by Willard B. Riano at the Rex Bookstore


when I checked out the new editions of Paras and Reyes. They are still there.

And, yes, the cover of Riano's book is beautiful. But we should not judge the book by its cover, right?

Saturday, January 12, 2013

While I Was Away

In my last post, I thought I'd be away only for the holidays of christmas and new year. But my desktop died after christmas. It was already 5 years old; ready for the graveyard. I switched to the notebooks and the iPad for my surfing but waited to get a new desktop before updating this blog. I still haven't gotten used to using a notebook's keyboard for extended typing.

My rather disappointing experience in getting a replacement for my desktop is narrated here.

While I was away, I was busy reading these two books.



Notice my bookmark?