Punitive Compensation in the Latin Legal System – Complicated Question and Confused A nswer! A Study of the French Position and an Explanation of the Egyptian and Lebanese Position

Prof. Mohammad Arfan Alkhatib
Professor of Civil Law
Law Department, Ahmad bin Mohammad
Military College, Doha, Qatar

Abstract:


According to a comparative-critical analytical approach, the research presents an original study of one of the most ignored aspects of the civil responsibility system in the Latin school: “Punitive compensation”, by clarifying the French position and explanation the Egyptian and Lebanese positions, according to a research scheme that dealt in its preliminary entrance to the philosophical rooting of this compensation. Then, in its first and second sections, he presents the repercussions of this rooting on the legal dealings with this compensation, which has turned into confusion at the legislative and judicial levels.
The research concluded that the punitive compensation from the original point of view is not far from the legal thought in any of these countries. At the French legislative level, which, despite its confusion, recorded its official discussion with it in recognition of it. Or at the judicial level, where the judiciary, as the train of the next legal change, will play its final role in enhancing the legal and jurisprudential acceptance of these compensations. And stressing that this confusion, although not translated until then by Arab legislative efforts, it was translated into an increasing jurisprudential movement within the Arab jurisprudential arena. A movement that was not lost on the remarkable judicial presence of both Egyptian and Lebanese legislators.
Accordingly, the research recommended the necessity of preparing these legislations for this inevitably coming openness, by ensuring a greater understanding of the nature and privacy of these compensations. Hoping that Arab civil jurisprudents would provide more in-depth legal research into the philosophical and intellectual rooting of these compensations, in order to achieve a correct legal understanding of them. Also, recommending that a new jurisprudential review of the role of error as a cornerstone of responsibility, not as a consideration for compensation only, by expanding the legal understanding of the idea of compensation related to this responsibility, between traditional compensation and punitive compensation. He stressed that the state of judicial refusal to accept these compensations would not last long, warning of the need to prepare for greater inter-openness and legal acceptance of new ideas, if they serve a higher cause, which is justice in compensation in its traditional and punitive dimensions. I hope from all this that the French legislator will reconsider the credibility of these compensations, and that this will have the right legal repercussions on Arab legislation in general and related to the subject of this study.

Keywords: civil punishment, profitable mistake, Civil fine, Compensation and damage, and moral damage.

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