Roman Obligations

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Obligations can be both moral and legal obligations. For example, a moral obligation would be to help someone when they’re in need of help. We do not legally have to help someone, but it is seen as moral to do so. Legal obligations are where an individual is bound by a contract or responsibility to perform a certain duty. For example, a parent would have a legal and also a moral obligation to look after their child. If the obligation is breached then they could possibly face charges. In Roman law, an obligation was defined as a ‘vinculum iuris’ which means a legal bond in Latin. This means that we are “constrained to do something according to the law of our state.”1. It could be argued that we only follow the law because we are obligated to do so and we do not want to end up in trouble with the law by not obeying the obligations that are set out for us. According to Justinian, obligations arise from contract, quasi-contract and delict.

Roman law helped us build the basis of our legal system. The Romans had ways of understanding obligations from real and personal remedies and rights. This has helped us understand what an obligation is in today’s society.

The romans had a division between in rem and personam. In rem was where you vindicated ownership over a property and an in personem was aimed at people. These were both …show more content…

In Roman law, two fundamental types of remedy underpinned private law.3 An in reum was to vindicate ownership or some lesser property right in a thing; it was a remedy aimed at the thing itself. The substantive area of law concerned with these real remedies.4 English law conforms to the pattern of legal relations at the level of fact, but there are some exceptions. One of the most important ones are the equitable remedy of tracing The Court of Chancery took the view that the money might not be a consumable on occasions, so it could be reclaimed on the basis of in reum

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