Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 1.djvu/119



T is because rights exist and because they are sometimes violated that remedies are necessary. The object of all remedies is the protection of rights. Rights are protected by means of actions or suits. The term “remedy” is applied either to the action or suit by means of which a right is protected, or to the protection which the action or suit affords. An action may protect a right in three ways, namely, by preventing the violation of it, by compelling a specific reparation of it when it has been violated, and by compelling a compensation in money for a violation of it. The term “remedy” is strictly applicable only to the second and third of these modes of protecting rights; for remedy literally means a cure,—not a prevention. As commonly used in law, however, it means prevention as well as cure; and it will be so used in this paper. In equity the term “relief” is commonly used instead of “remedy;” and, though relief is a much more technical term than remedy, it has the advantage of being equally applicable to all the different modes of protecting rights.

Though remedies, like rights, are either legal or equitable, yet the division of remedies into legal and equitable is not co-ordinate with the corresponding division of rights; for, though the