Comparative Constitutional Protection of Contracts in the United States and Chile

Abstract

The article highlights both the historical and the current symmetry between the legal foundations of the American doctrine of the “impairment of contracts,” and the principle of intangibilidad de los contratos (inviolability of contracts) under Chilean law. It advances the thesis that even though they proceed from two different juridical traditions, the American from the common law tradition, and the Chilean from the Roman-Canon-civil law traditions, both the American and Chilean systems share important similarities in jurisprudential developments regarding the protection of the sanctity of contracts, and by extension in the protection of the right to private property.

Keywords: Contracts, impairment of contracts, comparative law, Chile, right to property