Claims and the Operative Part: The Limits of the Relief a Court Can Grant

Abstract

This volume asks whether a court may order a resolution it considers right even where the party did not seek it. The scope of the relief that a judgment grants is bound by the purport of the claim. Correcting facts must be distinguished from granting a performance that was not applied for. The path to relief opens where the necessary performance falls within the scope of a lawful application and is adjudicated in the dispositive part within that scope, and closes where the desired performance remains outside the scope of the application and the court cannot add it to the dispositive part of its own accord. The six sections address, in turn, the outer boundary set by the application, the purport of the claim and the cause of the claim, a performance only partly demanded, the moment when amendment becomes necessary, inconsistency between the reasons and the dispositive part, and the explanation of procedural limits. The strongest counterargument is as follows. A party's error in expression results in the refusal of manifest relief for a right. The structure of written submissions and the axis design of the determination ledger are not addressed in this volume.