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Patriae potestas. law, the discipline and profession concerned with the customs, practices, and rules of conduct of a community that are recognized as binding by the community. Enforcement of the body of rules is through a controlling authority. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/332745/law
Beyond this, patriae potestas was the power of the father over life and death of his wife, children, slaves, and other members of the Roman household.

patria potestas, (Latin: “power of a father”), in Roman family law, power that the male head of a family exercised over his children and his more remote descendants in the male line, whatever their age, as well as over those brought into the family by adoption. This power meant originally not only that he had control over the persons of his children, amounting even to a right to inflict capital punishment, but that he alone had any rights in private law. Thus, acquisitions of a child became the property of the father. The father might allow a child (as he might ...

Source: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...atria-potestas