Tolerance and Compromise

In one line

Compromise ends a dispute by each side surrendering part of its claim; tolerance ends it by each side leaving the other's claim alone.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: compromise is the form of accommodation in which parties of roughly comparable strength each abandon a part of their demand in order to reach a settlement, so that neither prevails entirely and both accept the result. Tolerance, or toleration, is the form in which no party abandons anything: the parties simply permit one another to hold and practise their differing beliefs and ways of life, agreeing to coexist without resolving the difference at all.

Compromise

Its conditions

Roughly equal strength. This is the essential condition and the one to state first. A party able to win outright has no reason to concede anything, so compromise appears where neither side can impose its will. It follows that compromise is evidence of a balance of power, and its absence is evidence of the opposite.

A shared interest in ending the dispute, usually because continuing is costly to both.

Divisibility. The thing in dispute must be capable of being divided or traded. Money is; a claim to be recognised as the rightful heir is not, which is why some disputes settle easily and others cannot.

Willingness to accept less than the whole, which requires that each party value settlement above total victory.

Its characteristics

1. Mutual concession. Both give up something, which distinguishes it from conversion and from coercion.
2. Nobody is satisfied, and this is normal rather than a failure. A compromise that fully satisfies one party was not a compromise.
3. The difference is not resolved, only set aside.
4. It is deliberate and conscious, unlike much accommodation.
5. It is provisional. A shift in the balance of strength invites reopening.

Where it appears in law

Compromise is the ordinary way disputes actually end. Settlement of a suit, compounding of an offence where the law permits it, a consent decree, a negotiated contract term, a conciliated industrial dispute, and the entire practice of Lok Adalat proceed on it. The Code of Civil Procedure's provision for recording a compromise and passing a decree in its terms is compromise given legal force, and the preference for settlement in family and commercial matters exists because those parties must continue dealing with each other, as [Accommodation] explains.

Its limits

Not everything should be compromised, and this is the point that lifts an answer. A claim to a legal right is not automatically a suitable subject: a person entitled to a statutory minimum wage who settles for less has compromised, and the reason the law makes some rights non-waivable is precisely that compromise between unequal parties reproduces the inequality. Where bargaining power is unequal, compromise is coercion wearing a better name.