Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

In this article, the authors analyze, from doctrine and jurisprudence, both national and international, the treatment of maximum mortgages, their meaning, main characters, problems surrounding their application, and various aspects of the economic role they play in legal traffic. Maximum mortgage supposes that the parties establish, at the moment of their constitution, a maximum amount of mortgage liability, which given their flexibility has allowed new financial and credit products. This has generated a questioning of the existence of the principles of accessoriety and specialty, because when it is established, there is no specific credit.

In this paper, the author focuses on treatment that genocide receives from the field of sociology, then he checks the differences of sociological studies with legal regulation contained in Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, specifically to groups that are subject to protection in legal definition of genocide.To achieve his purpose, the author develops how the process of production of the Convention was as well the criticism of legal definition of genocide in sociology. The author concludes sociological definitions have limitations, gives primacy to legal concept of genocide and affirms that social groups not protected by the Convention find protection by other rules of International Criminal Law.

The Constitutional Court of Colombia, in its role as supreme interpreter of the Constitution of that country, declared article 1616 of the Civil Code as constitutional in Judgment C-1008 of 2010. Said article establishes the debtor’s liability for damages in contractual matter. The Court upholds its ruling using, among other arguments, article 74 of the Vienna Convention for the International Sale of Goods and article 7.4.4 of the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts, which means that the ruling was widely based on the lex mercatoria. In this article, the authors analyze the Court’s judgment and discuss about the uniform interpretation that the customs and practices of international commerce must be subjected to.

Social Economy companies constitute not only a particularly valuable legal instrument to empower workers and consumers in a digital and globalised market, but they are also a clear alternative to profit-making companies. Although Spain was a pioneer by recognising this sector in the Law 5/2011, of March 29th, of Social Economy, the main criticism lies in the lack of application of the framework, in general, and the measures of the Seventh Additional Provision, in particular. These measures called for the review of specific legislation in order to remove the limitations to Social Economy entities so that they could operate in any economic activity without any unjustified barrier. However, the Spanish legislator has not made any extra or systematic effort to reach that end. Therefore, this academic work will address the consequences of this inaction concerning the Social Economy companies that operate in a highly regulated sector: the insurance market.

One of the most important aspects of construction projects are their variations. These are situations that generate a series of negative consequences for those involved and constitute the breeding ground for claims and controversies, are inevitable in the construction industry. In the present article we will analyze two fundamental questions about variations: their conceptual delimitation and its causes. In general terms, we believe that a better understanding of the phenomenon will allow providing adequate and coherent solutions to the problem. The importance of this article derives from the vacuum at the legislative, doctrinal and jurisprudential levels in Peru. In effect, the regulation of the work contract contained in the Civil Code does not devote an organic treatment to variations. However, certain provisions of the mentioned normative body (as well as others included in sectoral disciplines) refer to the changes assigning them important legal effects.

The pardon and right of grace granted to Alberto Fujimori in December 2017 were widely questioned for ethical, political and legal reasons. In the field of Law, the decision was widely claimed as arbitrary and contrary to constitutional and legal  norms. This article focuses on International Human Rights Law and assesses how the presidential grace granted contradicts norms from this field of International Law. The authors discuss the inadmissibility of presidential graces in cases of serious human rights violations, the incompatibility of the measure with the rights of the relatives of the victims, the nonobservance of due process, and the lack of necessity and proportionality in the decision.

In Peru, article 52-A of the General Corporation Law incorporated the shareholders’ right to information outside of the General Shareholders Board for companies. In said article, this right is limited by two aspects: (i) that it must be requested by shareholders representing no less than five percent (5%) of the paid capital and (ii) that the required information must not compromise reserved facts or matters whose disclosure may damage the company. Although the aforementioned law does not explicitly indicate it, another restriction is that said right cannot be exercised in an abusive manner. This paper discusses the limitations to the shareholders’ right to information outside the General Shareholders Board and the abuse of said right, questioning whether it needs to be audited or if it compels the administration to prepare information required by the shareholders.

The present paper proposes critical reflections to the prevailing thesis of Peruvian doctrine that considers that pre-contractual liability is subsumed in the general clause of atypical extra-contractual liability. In addition, a Peruvian judgment is analyzed to demonstrate that it is possible to argue in future cases the existence of a pre-contractual obligation based on the category of “an obligation without benefit”, which emanates from objective good faith.

In this article, the author discusses economic crimes and argues that corporative spaces create contexts where white collar crimes are normalized. The concept of “white collar crime” is further analyzed, as well as the problems that their prosecution must face, such as a culture that values power and money, the lack of a social conscience of the harmful consequences of this type of crimes and the lack of information in mass media.

After the rejection of bicameralism on December 9, 2018’s referendum, everything suggests that the opportunity for a major change was lost. The project subjected to the referendum was quite bad. However, its rejection is not so bad news. It provides the opportunity to a more consistent and technical reform. It is true that sometimes more from something bad sounds as something worse. More congressmen, for some, sounds frightening. However, there are strong reasons to believe that a bicameral congress, even with more congressmen, is better than a unicameral one with fewer congressmen. In this paper, the authors analyze how bicameralism allows that bills are passed by groups that represent most of the population, product of a broader political consensus. It allows that higher quality bills pass, as a consequence of a better process of scrutiny and reflection. Interestingly, raising transaction costs of the legislative process reduces the number of bills and improves the quality of the ones that pass. A bicameral congress creates incentives for the members of both lower and upper houses to fulfill their functions properly, especially when the electoral system is based on small constituencies (uninominal districts for deputies and binominal for senators).