SERVITUDES, NATURAL, civil law. Those servitudes which arise in consequence of the nature of the soil.

2. By law the inferior heritages, are submitted in relation to the natural flow of waters, and the like, to the superior. An inferior field is, therefore, subject to the injury or prejudice which the situation of the ground, in its natural state, way cause it.

SERVITUDES, personal. Those by which the property of a subject, in Scotland, is burdened in favor, not of a tenement¹, but of a person. Ersk. Pr. L. Scot. B. 2, t. 9, s. 23. Life rent is the only personal servitude there.

SERVITUS, civil law. A service or servitude; a burden imposed by law, or the agreement of parties upon certain persons, for the benefit of others; or upon one estate for the advantage of another, or for the benefit of another person than the owner.

SERVITUS. Servitude; slavery; a state of bondage². "Servitus autem, est constitutio," say the Institutes of Justinian, 1, 3, 2, "qua quis dominio alieno contra naturam subjicitur." Servitude is a disposition³ of the law of nations, by which, against common right, one man has been subjected to the dominion⁴ of another. See Bract. 4 b; Co. Litt. 116.

SERVITUS LUMINUM, civil law. The name of a servitude by which an obligation is imposed on the owner of a house to allow windows or lights to be put in his wall by the owner of the adjoining house. Dig. 4, 14, 40.

SERVITUS STILLIClDII, civil law. The name of a servitude which obliges the owner of an estate to receive, or his right to turn aside, the droppings or stream from his neighbor's house. Dig. 8, 2, 20 and 21, 41; Voet, h. t. n. 13. Vide Stillicidium.

SERVITUS TIGNI IMMITTENDI, civil law. The name of a servitude which consists in requiring him who owes it, to permit his neighbor to place his joists on his wall. It differs from the servitude Oneris ferendi. (q. v.) in this, that in the former the owner of the servient building is bound to repair and rebuild the wall; whereas, in the latter he is not. Dig. lib. 8, §2.

SESSION. The time during which a legislative⁵ body, a court or other assembly sits for the transaction of business; as, a session of congress, which commences on the day appointed by the constitution, and ends when congress finally adjourns⁶ before the commencement of the next session; the session of a court, which commences at the day appointed by law, and ends when the court finally rises a term.