Relief

Import Relief and the GATT Policy Negotiations

In relation to the GATT Policy Negotiations, Christopher Mark (1993) provided the following explanation and/or definition of Import Relief: Governmental action to temporarily restrict imports in order to prevent or remedyinjury to domestic workers or firms producing goods competitive with those being restricted. Seesafeguards.

Legal and Equitable Relief

Two kinds of remedies have traditionally been employed for breach of contract: legal relief and equitable relief. Legal relief was relief available in “courts of law.” Equitable relief was extraordinary relief originally available from the King, then from the King’s Chancellor, and finally from the Chancery courts or “courts of equity.” See Dan B. Dobbs, Handbook on the Law of Remedies (St. Paul, MN: West Pub. Co., 1973), pp. 24-34 (describing the historical development of courts of equity and the distinction between legal and equitable relies; E. Allan Farnsworth, Contracts (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1982), pp. 818-824 (same). These were not, however, the only court systems that coexisted in England. See Harold Berman, Law and Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1984), p. 10 (stressing the importance of competing courts to the Western legal tradition).

Legal relief normally takes the form of money damages. The historical picture is not quite this clear-cut. For one thing, medieval English common law courts may not have had as strong a preference for money damages as is commonly assumed. See Frederick Pollock and Frederic Maidand, The History of English Law, Vol. II (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2d ed., 1898), p. 595 (“[Even when the source of the action is in our eyes a contractual obligation, the law tries its best to give specific relief “) For another, during most of the medieval period, the effective remedy for breach of most contracts in the common law court was enforcement of a penal bond. See generally, A. W. B. Simpson, 4 History of the Common Law of Contract (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 88-125. Thus, every sort of obligation could be reduced to a monetary one or a ‘debt’ by the party in breach. Beginning in 1283, a debtor’s liability to pay could be enforced by imprisonment; see Simpson, p. 87.

Equitable relief normally consists either of specific performance or an injunction – that is, the party in breach may be ordered to perform an act or to refrain from performing an act.

Author: Randy E. Barnett. Copyright (c) 1986 Social Philosophy & Policy