ABSTRACT
Liability imposed by good faith to prevent unjust enrichment was quasi-contractual. In the nineteenth century the conception of liability as resting on intention was put in metaphysical rather than ethical form. In the nineteenth century the conception of liability as resting on intention was put in metaphysical rather than ethical form. The classical Roman lawyer, thinking in terms of natural law, spoke of bond or relation of right and law between them whereby the one might justly and legally exact and the other was bound in justice and law to perform. The French civil code made the idea of Aquilian culpa into a general theory of delictual liability, saying, "Every act of man which causes damage to another obliges him through whose fault it happened to make reparation. Suppose that instead of beginning with the individual free will the authors begin with the wants or claims involved in civilized society—as it has been put, with the jural postulates of civilized society.
