Innominate contracts and the contractual scheme

All in all, it will have become clear that the advent of the innominate contracts entailed a fairly major inroad into, but not a complete abandonment of the rule ex nudo pacto non oritur actio.¹⁸³ A whole variety of consensual arrangements, of pacta in the broad sense of the word, had become legally recognized; but this recognition depended, first of all, on the fact that one of the parties had already fulfilled his side

® D.

“ Cf.. too. Ulp. D. 19. 5. 13 pr.

^s Cf. e.g. the Digest title 19. 4 ("De rerum permutatione"!.

^E Buckland/Stein. pp. 524 sqq.; Thomas. TRL, pp. 314 sq.; Kaser. RPrll, pp. 407.445; more specifically on transactio, cf. Maria Emilia Peterlongo, La transazione net diritto romano (1936); Aldo Schiavone, Studi suite logiche deigiuristi romani. "Nova negotia" e "transactio" da Labeone a Ulpiano (1971), pp. 7 sqq., 163 sqq.; Friedrich Ebel, Berichtung, transactio und Vergkich (1978), pp. 50 sqq., who also deals specifically with the reception and post-reception development of transactio in the German ius commune; Karoly Visky, "Les regies du droit romain relatives aux transactions judiciaires et extrajudiciaires a la fin de 1'epoque classique", (1983—84) 12 Index 87 sqq.; on the condictio ob transactionem, see Fritz Sturm, Studi in onore di Cesare Sanjilippo, vol. Ill (1983), pp. 627 sqq. On precarium cf. Pierpaolo Zamorani, Precario habere (1969); Max Kaser, "Zur Geschichte des precarium", (1972) 89 ZSS94 sqq.

^lfO With the general recognition of the enforceability of all kinds of pacts (also "naked" ones), the actio praescriptis verbis (and also the actio aestimatoria) became, of course, redundant ("inutilis et in desuetudinem abiit": Groenewegen, Tractatus de kgibus abrogatis, Digest. Lib. XIX, Titt. Ill, V). On the treatment of innominate contracts by glossators and commentators, cf. Jean-Pierre Baud, "Contrats nommes et contrats innommes en droit savant", (1976) 19 Studia Gratiana 31 sqq.

of the arrangement; and secondly, this performance had to be intended to elicit a counterperformance. The innominate contracts, in other words, were modelled on the example of the contracts re¹⁸⁴ and they were confined to "synallagmatic" relationships.¹⁸⁵ Thirdly, their binding character was undermined, to some extent, by virtue of the fact that the condictio causa data causa non secuta remained available.¹⁸⁶ Having rendered performance, a party to an innominate contract could therefore choose whether to demand counterperformance or restora­tion. Thus, in effect, he had the right at any time to cancel the arrangement.

VI.