Nemo dat quod non habet, I was taught as a young aspiring lawyer, Latin for “You cannot give what you do not have.”
I found it only too logical, for how can it be otherwise? You do not have a thing, and that is it, you just don’t have it and so the question of giving it to a third party just does not arise. No-brainer. But I have lived my life post-university mingling with people who behave as if the opposite of what that maxim states is the norm, who go about their lives trying to prove that it is exactly what you do not have that you should be passing on.
