The Roman Law of To-day
so. The man who denied a plain debt (nexum), or the damage which he had done to the chattel of his opponent, paid, if defeated, double; and so the person who, in a suit for the ownership of a thing, had as holder of it taken its fruits, was condemned to return double the value, and had, besides, to bear the loss, if defeated, of the sum which he had staked on the suit (sacramentum). The plaintiff had to suffer the same penalty when he lost the suit, for he had claimed the property of another; and if he erred ever so little in the valuation of an amount to which he was justly entitled, he forfeited the whole amount.
Of these principles and provisions of the older law much has passed over into the more modern law, but the new independent creations of that law breathe an entirely different spirit. It may be described as the employment and application of the measure of guilt in all cases of the violation of private law. Objective and subjective injustice are strictly distinguished. The former entails simply the
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