Book II - || "Theft" - Suppose someone opens or breaks into something too heavy to be moved. He is not responsible to an action of theft for the whole thing but only for
those things which he actually stole, because he cannot take the whole. Similarly, if
anyone opens a case of things which he cannot carry away in order to meddle with
the contents and he does meddle with them then even though he could manage to
take away several of the individual things, he is only a thief of the particular things he
takes and not of the whole if he cannot carry away the whole amount. However, if he
was capable of carrying away the whole container we say that he is a thief of the
whole amount, whether or not he opened it to take away the contents.
Review the third excerpt on theft. Besides the basic problem of theft, what problems
does this law attempt to solve? Do we have a similar approach to theft in the United
States today? Why or why not?