Discuss the meaning of the term ubi jus ibi remedium.

The law of torts is said to be a development of the maxim ubi jus ibi remedium (there is no wrong without a remedy). Jus signifies the ‘legal authority to do or to demand something’; and remedium may be defined to be the right of action, or the means given by law, for the recovery or assertion of a right. If a man has a right, “he must of necessity have a means to vindicate and maintain it and a remedy if injured in the exercise or enjoyment of it; and indeed it is a vain thing to imagine a right without a remedy; want of right and want of remedy are reciprocal. The maxim does not mean, as it is sometimes supposed, that there is a legal remedy for every moral or political wrong. The maxim means only that legal wrong and legal remedy are correlative terms; and it would be more intelligibly and correctly stated, if it were reversed, so as to stand, “where there is no legal remedy, there is no legal wrong.”   Again, speaking generally, there is in law no right without a remedy; and, if all remedies for enforcing a right are gone, the right has from practical point of view ceased to exist. The correct principle is that wherever a man has right the law should provide a remedy and the absence of a remedy is evidence but is not conclusive that no right exists.


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