Informal release
Acceptilatio was a fairly convenient and universally applicable form of release. It did, however, require the conclusion of a stipulation. With the rise of the informal, consensual transactions, a growing demand for an informal type of release was bound, sooner or later, to make itself felt.
Already the praetorian edict contained the clause "pacta conventa... servabo",[3877] and we have seen[3878] that this referred to pacta de non petendo, on the basis of which the debtor could raise the exceptio pacti conventi against the action of the creditor.[3879] Moreover, in bonae fidei iudicia this exceptio was inherent[3880] and the judge therefore had to take cognizance of an informal release immediately and ex officio. But the pactum de non petendo referred only to an individual claim, not to the legal relationship, the contract, in its entirety. In classical Roman lav/ it was, however, recognized that even the latter could be resolved informally: as long as no performance had yet been effected (that is, "re integra"), the parties could bring any consensual contract to an end by mere agreement.[3881] This agreement was sometimes referred to as contrarius consensus, for instance in the following text by Paulus: "Emptio et vendito sicut consensu contrahitur, ita contrario consensu resolvitur, antequam fuerit res secuta."[3882] It is not difficult to see how happily this fitted the general "contrarius actus" scheme according to which the acts creating and resolving an obligation were seen as symmetrical counterparts:"Nihil tam naturale est quam co genere quidque dissolvere, quo colHgatum est. ideo verborum obligatio verbis tollitur: nudi consensus obligatio contrario consensu dissolvitur";[3883]
and also: "cum re contraxerimus, re solvi debet."[3884]
II.
More on the topic Informal release:
- Release
- 2. The rise of informal solutio
- Formal release by way of solutio per aes et libram and acceptilatio
- Formal and Informal Contracts
- RELEASE
- 2. THE INFORMAL CONTRACTS
- PART II. ENSLAVEMENT AND RELEASE FROM SLAVERY.
- The first group of informal contracts were those consensu, four of them.
- CHAPTER XIX. RELEASE FROM SLAVERY. GENERALIA. OUTLINE OF LAW OF MANUMISSION DURING THE REPUBLIC.
- The tension between ‘informal’ exchange networks and ‘over-regulation’ of access to seeds: raising a social sharing disruption
- SUMMARY
- Codicil
- A. ABSTRACT TERMS OF LAW
- Specific performance in English law
- Pacta ex continent adiecta
- "Solutio propria", "in praecisa forma et specie obligationis"[3885] (to use the terminology of the European ius commune) has always been, and still is, the most important way of terminating obligations.
- The concept of donation in classicalRoman law
- Donation
- Cession