UNFORESEEN EVENTS AND COVID-19: ON THE ROLE OF COURTS AND STATUES IN TIMES OF CRISIS

This article discusses the role of courts and legislators in the development of Chilean private law in the context a recent bill that seeks to enact the French théorie de l’imprévision in the Chilean Civil Code as a reaction to the economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis. On the one hand, it holds that the public discussion triggered by this bill has led to the emergence of a certain consensus regarding the convenience of accepting this theory, but that the most adequate path for this remains an open question. In this context and relying on elements of Comparative Law, Legal Theory and Law and Economics it argues that, in the Chilean case, the best route to bring this doctrine into the legal system is a legislative reform, but that the proposed bill does not have the technical depth required for it. On the other hand, it argues that general and unforeseen crisis, as that of the COVID-19, should be dealt by special emergency legislation, not by judicial or statutory general reforms aiming to introduce new legal paradigms.