Ocker

: en studie om gällande rätt

Abstract

Usury is not a new commonplace, although there are expressions for usury in the Bible. The definition for usury has changed through the years. The purpose of this essay is to elucidate the usury prerequisite in the contract law and compare with the 36 § in the contract law. The essay uses a traditional jurisprudential research method. The traditional jurisprudential method means that you use different kind of accounting practise such as legislation, legislative history of an enactment, codes of practise and doctrines. The criteria for usury are distress, want of judgement, license and dependent attitude. There must also have been a clear case of abuse. Distress situations are those where there the usurer knows that the victim is in need of money, to buy something and the bank had said no to raise a loan. Want of judgement is a situation where one part is not less intelligent but cannot understand the full extent of the action. License means that a person deals with the usurer without realising the consequences of the action. Dependent attitude means that one part is stronger than the other part and takes advantage of the weaker part’s incapability to think or act by himself or herself. A clear case of abuse is to conclude the value of different performances, between the demanded values.