Page:Struggle for Law (1915).djvu/181

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The Roman Law of To-day


stances, he attached much more importance than to the money; viz., the moral satisfaction for the frivolous violation of his legal rights. Our present law never affords this satisfaction; it knows nothing of it; it takes cognizance only of the money-value of the obligation which has not been met.

In keeping with this insensibility of our present law for the ideal interest affected by a violation of legal right is the doing away with, in modern practice, of the penalties inflicted by private Roman law. The faithless bailee no longer incurs infamy among us. The greatest piece of rascality, if its perpetrator is only skillful enough to evade the criminal law, escapes in our day, entirely free and unpunished. On the other hand, money-penalties (Geldstrafen) and the penalties of frivolous denial, figure in the law books, but they are never applied in practice. But what does this mean? Only that with us subjective injustice is reduced to the level of objective injustice. Between the debtor who shamelessly denies the loan made him and

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