Legal remedy

When someone suffers harm from a wrongful act, a court can step in using what’s called a legal remedy—also known as judicial relief or a judicial remedy. This is the tool a court uses, typically in civil cases, to enforce a right, impose a penalty, or issue an order that compensates for the injury. In legal systems based on common law or a mix of common and civil law, remedies fall into two main types: legal remedies, like a specific sum of money (damages), and equitable remedies, such as injunctions or orders to perform a contract as agreed. A third type, declaratory relief, simply clarifies the rights of the parties involved without awarding money or ordering any action. Which remedy applies depends on the nature of the wrongful act and who is liable. Under international human rights law, people have a right to an effective remedy.

In the United States, judges have traditional remedies to counter juror bias caused by news coverage. The First Amendment prevents the government from censoring speech, allowing the media to influence legal proceedings. This creates tension with the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees criminal defendants a fair trial. To limit the impact of pretrial publicity, judges can use six remedies: voir dire (questioning potential jurors), change of venue (moving the trial), change of veniremen (bringing in jurors from elsewhere), continuance (delaying the trial), admonition (warning the jury), and sequestration (isolating the jury).

English and American law follow an old maxim—sometimes more honored in theory than practice—that every right comes with a remedy, and without a remedy, there is no right. Lawmakers claim to provide suitable remedies to protect rights. This principle was first stated by William Blackstone, who wrote that it is a settled rule in English law that every withheld right must have a remedy, and every injury its proper redress. Beyond the UK and US, many countries use legal remedies, though approaches differ.

Common law systems recognize three main categories of judicial remedies. Legal remedies come from England’s law courts and usually involve money paid to the victim, called damages or replevin. Damages aim to compensate for harm caused by a breach. Historically, legal remedies were only monetary, so victims seeking other forms of compensation had to go through a separate system. Today, courtrooms and procedures are unified, but the distinction between asking for money versus action remains. Non-monetary compensation falls under equitable remedies, which come from the English Court of Chancery and Court of Exchequer. Declaratory remedies form the third category. Unlike the others, they involve a court deciding how the law applies to specific facts without ordering anyone to do anything. Courts issue declaratory remedies on many issues, such as legal status, property ownership, the meaning of a statute, or rights under a contract. Besides these three basic types, there are others like reformation and rescission, which deal with contracts that need rewriting or canceling.

Within legal remedies, there are several kinds of damages. Compensatory damages are paid directly to the claimant to cover loss or injury when the defendant is found liable. If the claimant has clear costs, the amount is easy to set. When liability comes from a failure to perform a service, the court calculates damages by figuring out what a third party would charge to do the same job. The court also considers any savings or profits the non-breaching party made because they were freed from the broken contract’s obligations. If they gained from alternative arrangements, compensatory damages equal their loss minus those gains.

Consequential damages, also called special damages, cover indirect losses caused by the defendant and are decided case by case due to their specific nature. Lost profits are a common example in contract law. If a breach causes the plaintiff to lose profits, those can be recovered if the plaintiff can prove the loss and link it to the wrongful conduct—which is often very hard. Legal expenses from suing to get a remedy are not counted as consequential damages and cannot be charged to the defendant unless the contract says otherwise.

Punitive damages serve a different purpose: their main goal is to punish the defendant.