Personal statutes

In foreign and modem civil law. Those statutes which have principally for their object the person, and treat of property only incidentally. Story, Confl. Laws, § 13. A personal statute, in this sense of the term, is a law, ordinance, regnia-tion, or custom, the disposition of which affects the person, and clothes him with a capacity or incapacity, which he does not change with every change of abode, but which, upon principles of justice and policy, he is assumed to carry with him wherever he goes. 2 Kent, Comm. 456. The term is also applied to statutes which, instead of being general, are confined in their operation to one person or group of persons. Bank of Columbia v. Walker, 14 Lea (Tenn.) 808; Saul v. Creditors, 5 Mart. N. S. (La.) 591, 16 Am. Dec. 212.

Defined under Statute in Black's Law Dictionary.