Delegation

delegation, and agency, is a fertile source of legal maxim. Two crackers:

• Delegatus non potest delegare - someone to whom you have delegated a power cannot, unless you have specifically empowered that person to do so, onwardly delegate it;
• Nemo dat quod non habet one cannot give, or delegate, a right you don't have.

This latter one ought, but does not, nix that tedious drafting construction: “neither X, nor anyone acting on its behalf, may do Y”. For if, by the lights of the law, X has no right to do a thing, it follows as a matter of ineffable Latin logic that nor may any of X’s servants, agents, attorneys, nominees or delegates, unless that person happens independently to have the right to do it, conferred by some other means - in which case this contract will singularly fail to prevent that person from doing that thing anyway.

See also

• Circle of delegation
• Inverted delegation
• Escalation
• Circle of escalation