Bodin and Grotius reclassifying onerous contracts
A while ago, I made an entry in this journal about innominate and synallagmatic contracts. Continuing on that theme, I wanted to record some additional patterns that are now emerging in my study of Bodin's legal science and some of the later Natural Law School theorists. Take a look here first: This is a detail from Bodin's Distributio in the section where he discusses contractual agreements. I'll be explaining this in greater detail in Divisions of Law . He calls this 'mercenarium' to indicate the transactional quality of these contracts to enable commerce (but he is really talking about 'onerous' contracts - as opposed to 'gratuitous' which he treats later). Most Roman consensual contracts fall under this new heading. What caught my eye is how the subdivisions of onerous contracts are the 'innominate contracts': Do-ut-des; Do-ut-facias; -Facio-ut-facias; etc. hybrid forms. Grotius tries something similar in his outline of Roman-Dutch
