The law of obligations is one of the component private law elements of the civil system of law. It includes contract law, delict law, quasi-contract law, and quasi-delict law. The law of obligations seeks to organize and regulate the voluntary and semi-voluntary legal relations available between moral and natural persons with respect to

Despite the relatively distinct nature of these various sources of obligations, they are considered together under a law of obligations on the basis that all are instances where a debtor has a duty to execute a certain performance towards a creditor.

The word originally derives from the Latin "obligare" which comes from the root "lig" which suggests being bound, as one is to God for instance in "re-ligio". This term first appears in Plautus' play Truculentus at line 214.

Obligations did not originally form part of Roman Law, which mostly concerned issues of succession, property, and family relationships. It developed as a solution to a gap in the system, when one party committed a wrong against another party. these situations were originally governed by a basic customary law of revenge. This undesirable situation eventually developed into a system of liability where people were at first encouraged and then essentially forced to accept monetary compensation from the wrongdoer or their family instead of seeking vengeance. This signaled an important shift in the law away from vengeance and towards compensation. The state supported this effort by standardizing amounts for certain wrongs. Thus the earliest form of Obligation law derives out of what we would today call Delict.

Cecilia Wikström (born 17 October 1965 in Svanstein, Övertorneå, Norrbotten County) is a Swedish Liberal People's Party politician. Wikström is currently a member of the European Parliament. She is also a vicar in the Church of Sweden and the author of several books.

Cecilia Wikström got her Master of theology at the Department of Theology at Uppsala University in 1993. She has had various positions in the Church of Sweden, such as Parish Pastor, Student Pastor, Pastor for Prisoners and Cathedral Canon of the Uppsala Cathedral.

Between 2002 and 2009, Cecilia Wikström was a member of the Swedish Parliament for the Swedish Liberal Party. She was Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Cultural Affairs and member of the Committee on External Affairs. Wikström has been very engaged in questions relating to freedom of expression, in Sweden as well as in other countries. In 2009 Wikström run for the elections to the European Parliament on June 7. She was the third name on the Swedish Liberal Party's list and was elected to represent the party in the European Parliament. Hence, she left her post in the Swedish Parliament in July 2009.