Henry Billings Brown

“ Indeed, the power given to prefects to regulate administratively the distribution of the common lands would seem to presuppose a prior grant to the pueblo, made by a higher authority, and to have been intended merely to authorize the prefect to make distribution of such common lands among the inhabitants of the pueblo. ”

“ Prefects were functionaries well known in the Roman law, and under the empire were clothed with extensive powers, both judicial and administrative. With the decline of the empire they seem to have lost their importance, and to have finally disappeared; but, after remaining in abeyance for some hundreds of years after its fall, the office was revived in the eighth year of the French republic (1800) , and bestowed upon the heads of the departments into which the country had been divided by the national assembly in 1790. ”

“ The only case we have been able to find in which the power of prefects to make grants of public lands is discussed is that of Ohm v. City & County of San Francisco, 92 Cal. 437, 28 Pac. 580. In that case the complaint alleged that the state of California was prior to July 13, 1848, a political department of the republic of Mexico, and was subdivided into pueblos, constituting political municipalities, supplied with such officials as the republic or governor chose to appoint; that such officers could grant and distribute lands of the municipalities ”