The loan or usury? Compulsory enforcement of judgment - roman and law foundations and problems of application practice

Reviewed proceedings of scientific papers of Conference of Slovak and Czech law romanists, which take place at May, 10.-11.5.2018, at Faculty of Law, UPJŠ in Košice.

The submitted reviewed proceeding of scientific papers on „The loan or usury? Compulsory enforcement of roman - law basics and problems of application practice.”  is prepared within the solution of the grant project VEGA on: „The loan or usury? Compulsory enforcement of historical - law basics and problems of application practice.”, no. p. 1/0198/17.

The authors of papers are important personalities of Roman law working in the Slovak and Czech Republic, as well as PhD students and young scientists from Slovak and foreign universities who are active in the academic environment as well as in legal practice. The main goal of the editors is to help improve the current legal situation, which is assessed as unsatisfactory, and through a historical excursion of the development of the loan institute and then the forced execution of the decision, to create de lege ferenda proposals considering all areas of research.

The Proceedings trace the interrelationships between the substantive law institute in terms of the Roman law of contractus unilaterales - mutuum in its various types, often realized by the attachment of high interest rates, which bordered on the insurrection and the procedural law of individual lawsuits enforced in the legislative, formular and cognitive process. If there was no possibility to impose certain behaviour on the obligated person (the debtor, the sentenced person), then the declared general obligation to enforce the legal norms was only a legal term. It has always been the case that every internally well-organized state, whether antique or present, has to use power tools - often with the use of gross violence - but within the limits of the law, to promote what it has declared valid law. It must protect creditors on the one hand, but it must also prevent self-help and the use of illegal, unjustified and disproportionate violence.

The loan contract as a real contract has often become an integral part and relatively the most frequent reason leading to the compulsory enforcement, especially when contracting parties often agree on the connection of interest - sometimes within the legal limit, sometimes exceeding the legal framework - and in this way the potential future creditor (the plaintiff) significantly increased the insolvency risk of the debtor (the defendant, the sentenced) and of the subsequent execution. The pronounced and deepening social stratification of the Roman population and the secondary depreciation effort, the cancellation of the debts of the poor part of the population logically culminated in social unrest and revolt against the enforcement of the enforcement law.

The proceedings capture not only the rich scientific discussion of Slovak and Czech legal Romanists, but also the opinions, experience and knowledge of experts on contemporary law dealing with this type of issues. As a result, it provides a unique interdisciplinary view of the subject and raises many stimulus points for future research. This work proves that the problems encountered by the various representatives of the Roman jurisprudence and their legal and theoretical bases and solutions are undoubtedly useful and serve as a guideline also for solving legal issues in the field of modern enforcement proceedings.