The most accurate Roman classification of obligations was found in the institutions of Justinian (not to be confused with the instruments of Gaius), which classified them as obligations arising from contracts (ex contractu), those arising from torts (ex maleficio), those from quasi-contracts (quasi-ex contractu) and those from quasi-infringements (quasi-ex maleficio). [9] An obligation is real when the person is not responsible for performance, but property is responsible. For example, if one property owes an easement to another, the property owes the property, but not the individual owner. Quasi-contracts are supposed to be sources of obligations very similar to contracts, but the main difference is that they are not created by an agreement of will. The main cases are negotiorum gestio (conduct of another person`s affairs without his authorization), unjust enrichment and solutio indebiti. [11] This Roman classification is quite controversial by today`s standards, as many of these cases would be considered completely different from contracts (especially unjust enrichment) and would instead be classified as offenses or special sources of guilt. A competitive market is not a legal system, even if people adjust their behaviour to relative prices and all of this is a form of social order. Neither was the mutual nuclear deterrent, although it guided behavior and produced norms that regulated the Cold War. Many philosophers and social scientists agree that a social order is a legal system only if it has effective authority. An effective (or de facto) authority may not be justified, but it is particularly linked to a justified (de jure) authority. Justified authority is what the actual authorities claim or have generally acknowledged. The popular meaning of the term “obligation” is a duty to do or not to do something. In the legal sense, obligation is a civil law concept.
An obligation may be voluntary, for example an obligation arising from a contract, a quasi-contract, a unilateral promise. An obligation can also be created unintentionally, such as a tort liability obligation or a statute (for example, California Uniform Interstate Family Support Act). An obligation binds two or more specific persons. Therefore, the legal meaning of an obligation refers not only to an obligation, but also to a correlative right – one party has an obligation, means that another party has a corresponding right. The person or entity responsible for the obligation is referred to as the debtor; The natural or legal person who has the right corresponding to an obligation is called a creditor. A theory of political obligation is not voluntary if its principles justifying legal authority do not affirm the choice or will of the subjects among their grounds for supposing that they are obliged to obey. Three of these arguments are of some relevance. According to the Ethiopian Civil Code, Book IV refers to obligations but does not contain a specific definition. Like French judges who apply Article 1101 of the French Civil Code, Ethiopian judges apply the principle of an obligation based on legal circumstances.
This Agreement exists between two or more parties or persons in which they delete, modify or create obligations in the legal sense. An imperfect obligation does not legally bind the parties to each other and does not have the same legal effect on the non-performance. Instead, failure to comply with an imperfect obligation requires accountability to a higher power. Examples are gratitude and charity. In this definition, an imperfect obligation is simply a moral duty. In the original sense, the concept of obligation referred only to liability for the payment of sums specified in the terms of certain written documents. To be considered an obligation, the document had to be signed under seal. In today`s legal world, the obligation refers to the obligation to participate in a particular act on the basis of their consent to another party or in accordance with the law. Obligation is the moral or legal obligation that obliges a person to perform, as well as possible sanctions for non-performance. An obligation is also a duty to do what is imposed by a contract, promise or law.
In the most general sense, duty is synonymous with obligation. When it becomes more technical, the obligation refers to the commitment that obliges a party to perform a task, perform an action or pay a sum of money required in accordance with the customs and laws of the country in which the agreement was concluded. An obligation may also refer to the letter or act by which a party testifies to the contract or agreement. The obligations continue to exist even if a civil obligation is similar to an obligation containing a contractual penalty containing a condition of payment or performance. An invoice usually has no conditions or penalties, although the actions described may be required, distinguishing an invoice from an obligation. Another way of describing an obligation is an act that binds one party to another under a possible penalty for performing an act. But even in its limited role, the approval has provoked sharp criticism. (For a good overview, see Simmons 1979, 57-100; for a qualified defense, see Beran 1987.) These focus on the questions of whether it actually exists and, if given, whether it would bind. Consent is not mere consensus or consent; It is a performative commitment that assumes a commitment through the act of consent itself. However, as with other promises and oaths, there are limits to its validity.
We must ensure that consent is not revoked by mistake, coercion or coercion. It must also respect the limits of its validity in terms of content. Locke argues that one cannot accept being killed, and therefore not slavery, and therefore nothing that amounts to slavery, including absolute government. One can think of an argument similar to the conclusion that political consent must be revocable. But as we build under all these conditions of validity, the commitment itself seems to do less and less work. Pitkin thinks he becomes “essentially irrelevant” in Locke`s version (Pitkin 1965, 57). Approval is saved from irrelevance only if we can explain why we value the power of committing to obedience. David Hume could not think of any reason: keeping one`s promises is an “artificial virtue” that serves the common good, just like obedience to the law. As long as the law is reasonably legitimate – and Hume is prepared to give it a very large place – a promise to keep is superfluous, because any plausible answer to the question of why we are bound by the promise would have “immediately, without any cycle, taken into account our obligation of fidelity”; “Since we are of equal power and authority, we gain nothing by dissolving one into the other” (Hume 1985, 481). However, a theory of consent does not have to “dissolve” fidelity into a promise – there may also be non-culpable conditions for obedience – but it must explain why it should depend on it. Three types of arguments were popular. First, there are good reasons for wanting a conscious control of responsibility for legal obligations.
In political authority, where the stakes are as high as they come, the power to give and refuse consent fulfills a function of ultimate protection beyond what we might expect from the fallible institutions of limited government. Second, consent allows people to build political loyalties by creating new political societies or joining existing ones, without waiting for the gradual emergence of community ties and reciprocity; Consent is an immediate passport to “perfect membership” in a Commonwealth. (Locke: § 119). Third, although consent is defined by its performative character, it is naturally accompanied by complementary non-performative characteristics: consent also expresses acceptance, or at least approval, of the government. This may mark approval leaders as important among a number of potential competitors, and it may indicate that they have a good chance of being effective, which in itself is a necessary condition for justifying any political authority. Sensitivity to these issues led Hart to defend a rules-based theory. He says that while sanctions may mark circumstances in which people are obliged to comply, they have an obligation only if they are subject to a practiced social rule that requires an act or omission. The fact that subjects generally use it marks it as normative.
Three other characteristics characterize mandatory provisions: they must be reinforced by serious or persistent pressure to comply with them; They must be considered important for social life or for a valuable aspect of it; and their requirements may conflict with the interests and objectives of the subject (Hart 1994, 85-88). This presentation of the nature of the obligations is not a representation of their validity. Hart does not say that a legal obligation is binding if there is a willingness to exert serious pressure to support them, etc. He believes that an obligation is legally valid if it is part of the legal system (i.e. if it is certified as such by the legal criteria of that system) and that a legal obligation is morally valid only if there are reasonable moral reasons for complying with it. But at least in his early work, he proposes the theory of practice as an explanation of duties in general – legal duties are the creatures of legal rules, moral duties of moral rules, and so on. (Hart later modified this view, see 1982, 255-68; and 1994, 256.) None of these versions of sanction theory has survived H.L.A. Hart`s critique (Hart 1994, 27-42; cf. Hacker 1973). First, they misleadingly present a number of different legal consequences – including compensation and even disability – as if they all acted as sanctions. Second, they render incomprehensible many well-known references to duties in the absence of sanctions, such as the duty of the highest courts to enforce the law.
Third, they provide an inadequate explanation of the non-optional nature.