The Treatment of Nuda Pacta in Byzantine Legal System
The Treatment of Nuda Pacta in Byzantine Legal System

Summary/Abstract: The Roman law of obligations is characterized by its rigidity. Despite the incorporation of new exchange forms, the Roman system of contracts, throughout its history and evolution, remained unchanged and always moved around the necessity to abide by legal formalities. This note is concerned with a sub-category of “pacta”, the so called “nuda pacta”, which were not enforceable due to the principle: “ex nudo pactio non oritur actio.” However, the principle of non-enforceability of “nuda pacta”, which was initially maintained in the Byzantine legal system, progressively did not correspond to the practical needs and was found to be inconsistent with the legal thinking of that time. The aim of this note, dealing with the treatment of “nuda pacta” in Byzantine legislation and generally in Byzantine legal thought, is to show the systematic effort of the Byzantines to formulate a complete definition of “nuda pacta”, but basically their tendency to abandon the rule ex nudo pacto non oritur actio, which paved the way for the formulation of the modern theory of conventions.

• Details
• Contents