The scholastic doctrine of causation
These were two of the most important bricks available to the medieval lawyers.[2829] The mortar was the scholastic doctrine of causation. Every effect, so the scholastics argued, is dependent upon its reason (causa), and causa is that without which a thing cannot exist: "Illud est proprie causa alicuius, sine quo esse non potest: omnis enim effectus dependet a sua causa."[2830] According to St.
Thomas Aquinas (and, ultimately, Aristotle), there are four kinds of causes: formalis, materialis, efficiens and finalis.[2831] Obviously, it was attractive, particularly for the canon lawyers and the commentators, to apply this scheme to the law of contracts and thus to extend the concept of causa as they found it in the Corpus Juris Civilis. If everything is based on a cause, so must contracts be. Baldus appears to have been the first to draw the consequences.[2832] Not only stipulations, all obligatory contracts are (must be) based on a specific causa. But whilst the former receive their causa from outside, the "nominate" contracts carry it within themselves:. stipulatio est contractus aliunde tamen causandus, quod non est in aliis contractibus specificatis, ut in locatione, emptione et venditione etc., qui sunt causa sui ipsius."[2833]
4.
More on the topic The scholastic doctrine of causation:
- 1. Causation in the Roman law of delict
- Pandectist doctrine
- THE DOCTRINE OF CAUSA
- Pacta sunt servanda and classical contract doctrine
- The development of the modern error doctrine
- Friedrich Mommsen's impossibility doctrine
- The common law and the doctrine of binding precedent
- The True Lawyer
- INTRODUCTION
- Causa and consideration in English law