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Abstract

That every judicial judgment, whatever its character, consists of premises and conclusion is a fact sufficiently obvious. In our system, especially, expression of the premises must very often be sought outside the actual judgment-order and collected from other parts of the judicial record or even from evidence aliunde of what took place at the hearing. But the legal nature of the relation between premises and conclusion is independent of the particular structure of the record and the mode of ascertaining what those premises were. Given satisfaction of the requirements of the law with respect to identity of parties, it is true everywhere that the rule of res judicata applies to the conclusion, but as regards its effect upon the premises wide differences exist between the Anglo-American law and the Continental. The present inquiry is directed to a brief consideration of these differences in the scope of res judicata with respect to the subject-matter involved: we leave out of view any question as to the persons affected. In other words, to borrow from Continental phraseology, what we are concerned with relates to the objective limits of res judicata (scope as to subject matter) as distinguished from its subjective limits, (scope as to parties).

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