Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Note on the 1965 Impression
- Introduction
- Abbreviations
- Chapter I THE SOURCES
- Chapter II THE LAW OF PERSONS
- Chapter III LAW OF PROPERTY
- Chapter IV LIMITED INTERESTS AND SERVITUDES
- Chapter V UNIVERSAL SUCCESSION
- Chapter VI OBLIGATIONS: GENERAL
- Chapter VII OBLIGATIONS: GENERAL (cont.)
- Chapter VIII PARTICULAR CONTRACTS
- Chapter IX QUASI-CONTRACT AND NEGOTIORUM GESTIO
- Chapter X DELICT AND TORT
- Chapter XI PARTICULAR DELICTS AND TORTS
- Chapter XII PROCEDURE
- Index
Chapter VI - OBLIGATIONS: GENERAL
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Note on the 1965 Impression
- Introduction
- Abbreviations
- Chapter I THE SOURCES
- Chapter II THE LAW OF PERSONS
- Chapter III LAW OF PROPERTY
- Chapter IV LIMITED INTERESTS AND SERVITUDES
- Chapter V UNIVERSAL SUCCESSION
- Chapter VI OBLIGATIONS: GENERAL
- Chapter VII OBLIGATIONS: GENERAL (cont.)
- Chapter VIII PARTICULAR CONTRACTS
- Chapter IX QUASI-CONTRACT AND NEGOTIORUM GESTIO
- Chapter X DELICT AND TORT
- Chapter XI PARTICULAR DELICTS AND TORTS
- Chapter XII PROCEDURE
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTORY
The elementary text-book of Gaius, followed by Justinian, after dealing with property and succession, enters upon a subject called Obligationes. Gaius describes this as consisting of contract and delict, to which Justinian adds quasi-contract and quasi-delict. Even so expanded the Roman obligationes are far from covering the whole field of what in modern theory are called iura in personam. It was not in accordance with the casuistic methods of the Roman lawyers, any more than it would be with us (we can hardly be said to have adopted the word), to seek for an exact definition of the abstract notion of obligatio. The word itself does not seem to be used as a legal term till the Empire. Obligationes are a group, within the field of what modern jurisprudence calls iura in personam, but no more covering the field of iura in personam than our treatises on contract, quasi-contract and tort cover that field.
For Gaius, obligatio is a notion which belongs entirely to the ius civile. No praetorian right or duty can be an obligatio, although jurists writing well after the Edict had been stabilised by Julian sometimes speak of obligatio in relation to praetorian rules. Justinian includes among obligations a few praetorian liabilities, under the rubric of quasi-delict, but in the main he follows the lines of Gaius: no agreement which gave rise to a merely praetorian right of action came for him, any more than for Gaius, under the head of contract.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Roman Law and Common LawA Comparison in Outline, pp. 193 - 236Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1952
- 1
- Cited by