Key Legal Principles: Non-Retroactivity, Res Judicata, Prescription, Common Good

Principle of Non-Retroactivity of Law

The principle of non-retroactivity of law means that a law can only apply to the future and will never have a retroactive effect. However, there are laws that apply retroactively. For example, laws that restrict themselves to declaring the meaning of other laws shall be incorporated into them but will not, in any way, affect the effects of judgments enforceable in the intermediate time.

Principle of Res Judicata

Res judicata is the effect produced by certain court decisions that are immovable, i.e., they cannot be discussed again. The principle of res judicata requires compliance with what was fixed in the sentence and also prevents double jeopardy by prohibiting the repetition of what has already been decided.

Prescription

Prescription means that after a certain time, you cannot bring an action or assert certain rights. Limitation is a way to acquire the property of others or to extinguish the shares and rights of others. This occurs when things have been possessed without those actions and duties being carried out for a certain time. An action or right is said to prescribe when it is extinguished by prescription.

Common Good

Not all authors regard the common good as an end of law. Professor Squella does not consider it as such because he says that the common good is not unique to the law, and it is not the only thing that corresponds to the right address or concern. Defining the common good is not easy because the subject itself is a complex issue. The common good is not the sum of the separate property of each individual. Instead, it embraces or integrates harmoniously all the other purposes of law. When we talk of the common good, we speak of the assets of the entire community as a whole unit, communicative and supportive. It is true that the common good is not unique to law and that this is not the only way to achieve it. Individual efforts, organizations, and the legacies of various generations, both in the material and intellectual aspects, are also important.

Professor Maximo Pacheco defines the common good as the set of spiritual, cultural, and material conditions necessary for the community or society to attain its goal. It succeeds in establishing a just order to make it possible for people within the community and society to attain their goals. The common good, then, tends to perfection. The realization of each individual is the whole society. Society should create conditions so that everyone can attain their end. There are certain characteristics of the common good, namely totality and proportionality or proportional equality.

Totality

Totality means that the common good is the good of the entire community, in which everyone participates and to which all contribute. This implies that the common good is a collection that meets the characteristics of unity of all private assets. The common good defines and communicates to each and every one of the members of the community.

Proportional or Proportional Equality

Proportional or proportional equality means that the common good is not integrally connected equally to each person in the community but in proportion to the attitudes and responsibilities of each individual. If we relate it to legal justice, proportionality must be related, in addition to legal justice, to distributive justice.