OBLIGATION (Lat. obligati.). bond, from ob/iyore, to bind), AT CIVIL LAw. In the widest sense legal obligation is equivalent to legal duty. but the teehnical meaning of the expression is much narrower. Continental jurists confine the term, in the first place, to duties toward it partien lar person or group of persons, excluding duties the State or community: in the second place, to duties assumed by or imposed upon a particular person or group of persons, excluding duties which rest upon all members of the com munity. Further. not all duties of particular persons to particular persons are designated as obligations: they are 1114 SO described when the duties result front sonic preexisting legal rela tion between the parties, like marriage. Such duties have indeed been called obligations r.r but this use of the word is not approved by modern writers. Finally. the term obligation is ordinarily restrieled to eases where the right which to the duty imposed upon or assumed by the person obligated has economic value. Technically, then. obligations are special legal relations in which one or more persons. usually deseribed ns creditors, are entitled to claim from one or more persons. usually described as debt acts or forbearances which are in he economic 1ntyrrst Of the creditors. in roman law, and in the of Latin countries at the present thin.. the word obligation is used to deseribe the legal relation, the duty of the debtor, and the right of the creditor. The German Im perial code has distinct terms. VIZ. SChnitircriiiii/ uiss. or debt-relation; rhimilirlikrit, or obliga and Forth nooisrech or right of demand.
The creditor's is at right to performance. In any law this right ran direetly and ex clusively against the debtor's person. Later the claim (mild be satisfied by seizure of goods. and ran against the person only in second instance: and °went Mu upon the person was transformed into imprisonment for debt. Sinec .the abolition of imprisonment for dela the elaim has become simply a claim against the goods, i.e. against. the estate of the debtor. it is a
right in personam only in this respect, that from the outset the creditor's claim runs against Ids debtor and no other person. while a right in tent runs against all the world. The duty of a per son in possession of property to restore such property to its (miter resembles the duty of a vendor to deliver the thing sold to the purchaser; hut in the former case the duty results from the owner's right in rem and is not properly described as an obligation. See IN REM; IN PERSONAM.
In the Roman Imperial law the court, enforced specific performance whenever this was possible, awarding pecuniary damages also on account of the debtor's delay (morel. If specific perform ance could not lie enforced, they awarded pecu niary damages. which were so measured as to put the creditor in as good a position, econom ieally, as he would have occupied if the debtor had performed at the proper time and place. The same rules are applied in modern civil law, although some of the modern codes provide that, in case of money debts, damages shall not exceed the legal interest. The fact that the creditor's claim is, in most cases. enforceable only through the award of damages is the reason why it is usually asserted that no obligation exists unless the creditor's interest is measurable in money. Indirectly, however, an act or forbearance in which the promisee has no pecuniary interest can be secured by an agreement that the promisor shall pay a certain SUM of money if he fails to do what he has promised, or does what lie has promised not. to do. Such 'conventional penal ties' were enforced in the Roman law and are enforced at modern civil law; and although some of the modern civil codes do not require that the creditor's interest lie measurable in money, claims not thus measurable can be enforced only where a decree of specific performance can lie obtained from the court, or where a penalty has been stipulated.