Duty

Inits use in jurisprudence, this word is the correlative of right. Thus, wherever there exists a right in any person, there also rests a corresponding duty upon some uther person or upon all persons generally. Butitis also used, in a wider sense, to designate that class of moral obligations which lie outside the jural sphere; such, namely, as rest upon an imperative ethical basis, but have not been recognized by the law as within its proper province for purposes of enforcement or redress. Thus, gratitude towards a benefactor is a duty, but its refusal will not ground an action. In this meaning “duty” is the equivalent of “moral obligation,” as distinguished froma “legal obligation.” As a technical term of the law, “duty” signilies a thing due; that which is due from a person; that whicha person owes to another. An cbligalion to do a thing. <A word of more extensive signification than “debt,” although both are expressed by the same Latin word “debitum.”

20 Vt. 725, 733.

But in practice it is commonly reserved ag the designation of those obligations of performance, care, or observance which rest upon a person in an official or fiduciary capacity; as the duiy of an executor, trustee, mangovernment upon the importation or exportation of gouds.