adstringimur

Updated: May 11, 2025

Whether it ultimately became a Contract depended on the question whether the law annexed an Obligation to it. So long as the Pact remained unclothed with the Obligation, it was called nude or naked. What was an Obligation? It is defined by the Roman lawyers as "Juris vinculum, quo necessitate adstringimur alicujus solvendæ rei."

Sir Henry Sumner Maine - Ancient Law: Its Connection to the History of Early Society

I can only say that the tendency of Roman law, which became stronger as it advanced, was to look upon legal consequences as united to legal causes by an inexorable necessity, a tendency most markedly exemplified in the definition of Obligation which I have repeatedly cited, "Juris vinculum quo necessitate adstringimur alicujus solvendæ rei."

Sir Henry Sumner Maine - Ancient Law: Its Connection to the History of Early Society