This research examines the concept of the statute of limitations from a historical perspective. The research will set forth the origins of the concept in Western culture and its evolution from Roman to English law, and then discuss major features of its transfer and application in the American legal system, with a view toward identifying how it was viewed by various legal authorities in the US and various uses to which it has been put.
The concept of the statute of limitations is deceptively simple. In the popular mind, the term refers to the amount of time during which a plaintiff may pursue a cause of civil action in court or, in criminal law, the amount of time that must elapse before a defendant is legally excused from the criminal liability associated with a crime. It is of course a truism of television courtroom drama (and the law, as it happens) that there is no statute of limitations on murder. But as will become clearer in the course of this report, the principal concern of the concept of the statute of limitations has always been connected far more to property and its ownership than to responsibility and its ownership.
As a legal concept, statutes of limitation have a complex heritage, dating back to the ancient period, and an even more complex manner of application in different cultures. References to limitation of actions date as early as the Roman period, in connection with laws of inheritance, which were of course related to laws of property. And it is out of the laws of property that statutes of limitations applicable to a whole range of law appear to have arisen.
Maine cites the concept "universitas juris, or university of rights and duties," which in Roman law attached to a citizen who in his lifetime had the option of exercising them and who could, by means of a will or testament, transfer them to an heir or co-heirs. In the Roman system, the principle of universal succession meant that the heir or co-heirs ...