On What Is Just Regarding the Alienation of Property of Minors

...the effects of ownership, which are situated in the free power of disposing of a thing and the faculty of vindicating it, shine forth at the very first glance. The other definition, however, which is cherished in the bosom of Lauterbach and Thomasius, namely that it is the right by which a thing is our own, while it struggles to demonstrate from the beginning what ownership is, merely begs the question. Nor do we thus acknowledge the definition of Grotius, who asserts that it consists in the faculty by which a person, not possessing a thing, can rightfully obtain it. For it is rightly argued by Huber (on Institutes, Title concerning Things Divided, § 13) that this is imperfect.

THESIS II.

While it is asserted that the effect of ownership consists in the free disposition of things as well as their vindication, we do not mean that both must concur in the very act in the person who is called the owner. For it suffices that the faculty of vindicating alone be present; since it can happen in many ways that the very disposition of one's own property, whether by innate convention or by the decree of the laws for certain reasons—partly civil, partly natural—may be either entirely taken away from a certain Owner, or at the very least restricted; for which reason, in the aforementioned definition of ownership...