Obligations in Classical Procedure

The civil law gave the praetor relatively few rules of procedure with which to manage a tribunal. Accordingly many rules of procedure were the product of the praetor's own active lawmaking. His lawmaking frequently took the form of actions and stipulations, which is to say, obligations. This essay describes a selection of law reforms where this was the case. The essay concludes with the suggestion that the praetor turned to more effective methods of enforcement, not because the older methods were poor, but because parties were more frequently turning to litigation for the adjudication of claims, and less frequently for simple arbitration.