ABSTRACT
In the ius commune, the version of Roman law once in force in much of continental Europe, the damages a plaintiff could recover depended on two distinctions: between harm suffered and lost profit (damnum emergens and lucrum cessans) and between consequences that arose directly from not having the performance promised and those that arose indirectly (circa rem and extra rem). Nineteenth century jurists congratulated themselves on replacing these obscure distinctions by simple formulae. These formulae are still with us, but they have proven to be too simple to explain when damages should be recovered. We would do better to re-examine the distinctions that the nineteenth century jurists threw away.
