Page 290 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NATURAL LAW
These precepts are Heineccius' elaboration of Grotius' appetitus societatis as the source of natural law, of which the second leads to the duty to remedy sales which had faltered because of a defect in the thing sold.19
Furthermore, according to Heineccius, the remedy for lesion beyond moiety must have been invented by the Roman emperors to mitigate one of the more stringent requirements of natural law. that, in principle, all instances of contractual inequality had to be repaired. After all, the mere fact of contractual imbalance implies that harm is done to one's fellow human being. Yet, in order to prevent chaos by litigation-eager civilians dragging each other to court for every trifle, it was decreed that only prejudices of more than half of the just price of the thing sold could be remedied in front of a judge.20 Apparently, Heineccius is of the opinion that already the Romans took fairness in exchange as the foundation of contract law, the sharp edges of which they had aimed to take off by introducing a remedy for lesion beyond moiety. Imposing a scholastic view on Roman contract law Heineccius reasons anachronistically. As learned earlier, the theory that contracts, because of their commutative aims, require fairness in exchange, and the division of rules for the forum internum and externum did not surface before the 12th century.21 It demonstrates how deeply natural law scholars believed in natural law principles existing independently of time or legal culture and that these had similarly guided the Ancients as themselves.22
nec illi ullam faciam iniuriam'.
19 Heineccius, Praelectiones, to Grotius' IBP proemium, 2, § 8, p. 8: '...in re convenit Grotius cum Hobbesio
et Pufendorfio. Omnes enim hic auctores ius naturae et gentium derivant ex principio socialitatis'.
20 Heineccius, Praelectiones, to Pufendorff's De officio, 1.15.4, p. 154: Porro ex eodem principio sequitur, 3. ut omnis laesio vel inaequalitas sit emendanda, si in contractu oneroso intervenerit; quod sit vel abrumpendo contractum, vel praestito damno, vel laesione:...Haec quidem ex iure naturae certa sunt et in theoria facile intelligentur, sed in re publica et praxi non possunt adcurate observari; ...2 interest rei publicae, ne lites in infinitum gliscant; in infinitum autem eas gliscere oporteret si ob laesionem quamlibet, etiam minimam, actio daretur. Itaque leges civilis, inprimis l. 2 C. de rescind. vendit. definiunt, tunc demum actioni locum fore, si alter laesus sit enormiter... Heineccius, Praelectiones, to Grotius' IBP, 2.12.12seq., p. 293: 'Si res sine culpa contrahentium vitiosa adpareat, id damnum contrahentes sibi invicem resarcire debent. Ratio ex eodem fundamento fluit. Nam 1. quum in contractu requiratur aequalitas (§ 8) non sufficit pretium esse aequale rei, sed rem quoque oportet esse aequalem pretio. Non autem aequale est, si vitiosa. 2. Regula iusti est, quod tibi non vis fieri, alteri ne feceris. Iam venditor non vult defraudari iusto pretio; ergo nec emtor debet circumveniri re vitiosa. Obiicitur: ius tamen Romanum non ob quodcunque rei vitium, vel quamcumque pretii inaequalitatem contractum rescindere, sed tantum ob laesionem enormem, l. 2. C. de rescind. vendit. Resp. 1, leges civiles non omnia ad vivum \[take things too litterally\] resecare possunt. Sufficit, modo illa vitia inhibeantur, per quae detrimentum capere posset res publica. 2. Interest rei publicae, ne litibus innumeris fatigentur iudices. Ergo nec
expedit ei, ut ob quamcumque laesionem minimam actiones dentur.'
21 The origins of the remedy more likely lie in the culture of Ancient Near East which emphasised the importance of land as being crucial to sustain a family. Possession of land therefore merited additional protection against market forces. See Westbrook, 'Origin', p. 52; Gordley similarly denies Aristotelian influence on Roman contract law. Gordley, 'Equality', p. 1622.
22 A point missed by Klempt, Grundlagen, p. 39ff.; other examples: Pufendorf, De iure naturae, 5.3.9; Felden, Annotata in Hug. Grotium De jure belli et paci, ad. lib. 2.12, § 9, p. 23; Wernher (1677-1743), Elementa, cap. 12, § 12, p. 277; Already Vangerow (1808-1870) in his Lehrbuch der Pandekten remarked that 'die Prämisse der lezteren Meinung, es sei schon dem älteren Rechte eine Reszission des Vertrags wegens schwerer Verletzung bekannt gewesen, völlig unsicher und zweifelhaft und durch die dafür angeführten Pandektenstellen ganz und gar nicht bewiesen ist'. Vangerow, Lehrbuch, vol. 3, § 611, p. 328.
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