Personal Statute

^ law whose principal, direct, and immediate object is to regulate the condition of persons. The term is not properly in use in the common law, although Lord Mansfield, in 2 W. Bl. 234, applied it to those legislative acts which respect personal transitory contracts, but is occasionally used in the sense given to it in civil law, and which is adopted as its definition. It is a law, ordinance, regulation, or custom, the disposition of which affects the person, and clothes him with a capacity or incapacity which he does not change with his abode.

See 2 Kent, Comm. (10th Ed.) 613.