The stipulation in the roman law and the bill in modern civil-legal environment

This article is the attempt to answer the questions: Why did classical civil scientists of Russia consider stipulation in the Roman law as the progenitress of the bill? Is this statement true or not? What have these two phenomena got in common and what are they unlike in? In order to clarify the situation the author of the article has analyzed the typical categories of the stipulation in Roman law and the bill in modern civil-legal field. The result of the work is the following: In despite of the distinction of an external form: the stipulation is a verbal contract, the bill is financially tangible, paper will of the drawer, the institute of the bill inherited remarkable characteristic features of the stipulation. This conclusion is based on the next facts: 1. Indisputable merit of different scientific theories about the nature of the bill obligatory relations consists in a certain and unconditional establishment their unilateral transaction character; 2. There exists the tendency in the modern civil right to recognize the binding force underlying in each unilateral legal transaction. The institute of the bill isn’t an exception. The presence of the binding force in the bottom of the conclusion the bill transaction reveals the contractual basis of it; 3. It is well-known that the emergence of the obligatory relations at the bill is preceded by the strict observance of the formal requirements distinctly defined by the law; 4. The legal purpose is considered to be constant quantity at the commission of any kind of the legal transaction. And it is peculiar to the institute of the bill as well; 5. Thus, it is necessary to note that the bill obligation does not demand designations of the material basis of a duty. It is indifferent for the emergence of the bill obligation in what types, on what bases the bill is written. That is why, the bill obligatory relations are convinced to be abstractive, and that provides the variety of an economic target in each individual occasion; 6. In case with the bill the civil law fulfils its main task: the property risks are distributed between the participants of the transaction and the value of responsibility is clearly prescribed by the law. Hereby, the material set forth above illustrates the likeness between the stipulation in Roman law and the bill. It makes the author recognize the latter to be a bright sample of such juridical transaction in modern civil-law field and consequently declare the stipulation the legal progenitress of the bill.