Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

18. Delict EEE

R oman and common law have similar ideas of a “wrongful act which does not involve a breach of con tract and for which the injured party can recover damages in a civil action”; we call this a “tort,” and in Roman law the parallel category of acts is called “delict.” Delicts were tried according to private procedure, and the plaintiff, if successful, received money compensation for the damage but potentially also addi tional cash as a punishment of the wrongdoer. Thus delicts and torts are somewhere between crimes (very much the business of the state) and, say, contract disputes (primarily a matter between the parties alone). The main difference between tort and delict is that the Romans included under the heading of delict several offenses (theft, most assaults) that we routinely treat as crimes today. The following sections will treat three of the most impor tant delicts, but I will begin by noting some features that are common to most or all of them. First, every delict required both an overt act and the intent to commit that act (even if not all the consequences were intended). Thus mere accident or bad intention alone could not give rise to a delict. These rules are shared with those for crimes (see the next chapter) as against,

187