Ana Filipa Conceição / Catarina Frade / Lorenzo Benedetti / Monika Maśnicka / Ruben Hollemans / Ruben Jesus

Insolvency practitioners; insolvency; corporate restructuring; supervision; liability; European and national law.

Insolvency practitioners are key actors in corporate restructuring and insolvency proceedings, balancing demands for justice with economic efficiency and protection of individual economic interests. IPs performance considerably influences the outcome of the winding up of non-viable companies and may also promote successful corporate restructuring. As servers of justice and promoters of private economic interests, IPs performance requires an adequate monitoring system and an effective accountability system.

João Paulo Remédio Marques

Claim; counterclaim; admissibility; connection between the claim and counterclaim; dependente issue; connected cases.

After carrying out a historical and a comparative analysis of the material requirements of admissibility of the counterclaim by a defendant and its connection with the claim made by the claimant, the present study deals with the situation in which the counterclaim constitutes a preliminary issue of the claim deducted by the plaintiff, thus emerging from the claim of the plaintiff and/or defense of the defendant.

António Graça Moura

Precontractual liability; culpa in contrahendo; obligations; Jhering; unjustified breach of negotiations; contractual invalidity.

The dynamism of juridical and economic traffic dictates the constant need of contracting between persons, be they natural or legal, in the exercise of their capacity to negotiate. The complex process leading to said contracting highlights, in particular, the institute of precontractual liability. The practical outlines of this institute — which, in the Portuguese Civil Code, appears laconically in an article with two numbers — have been discussed in doctrine and jurisprudence for several decades. Doctrines which link this institute to the regime of contractual liability confront with others which associate it with the regime of extracontractual liability and, in an intermediate position, there are doctrines which perceive it as a tertium genus between the formers.

Elina Moustaira

Cultural heritage; Slave trade; Cultural tourism; Languages; Caribbean court of justice; University of the West Indies; Legal cultures.

The role of culture in Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM’s) agenda is claimed to be very important. The CARICOM Secretariat has a culture program, aiming to strengthen the creativity of people. CARICOM annually manages the Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA). A huge issue is that of the cultural restitutions. Most CARICOM Member States have become States Parties to International Conventions related to cultural heritage. Sadly, all international Conventions concerning protection of cultural heritage do not have retroactive effect. There is also a CARICOM commission on reparations for slavery and native genocide against the governments of Britain, France and the Netherlands, the transatlantic slave trade, between the 16th to 19th centuries, being much associated with the Caribbean heritage.

Tomás Selas

Bilateral breach of contract; Contributory fault; Exceptions of non performance; Synallagma; tu quoque.

The Civil Code is designed to solve cases where one single party doesn’t perform their contractual obligations. The present article aims to be a contribute for the study of breach of contract by two parties, a term used to describe when both parties of a contract fail to perform its contractual obligations, starting from the analysis of the case solved by our Supreme Court of Justice in 14-01-2021, proc. n.º 2209/14.0TBBRG.G3.S1 related to a construction/building contract. It discusses if it is possible that the failure of one party can be relevant when the other party was already in a breach of contract.

Eduardo Carlos Dittmar

Consumers; Law; ethics; artificial intelligence; technology.  

Book review of Moreno Rebato, Mar, Inteligencia artificial (Umbrales éticos, Derecho y Administraciones Públicas), Navarra, Thomson Reuters Aranzadi, 2021, 144 pp. (ISBN: 9788413910291).

David López Jiménez

Consumers; Law; platforms; regulation; technology.  

Book review of Álvarez Moreno, María Teresa, La contratación electrónica mediante plataformas en línea, Madrid, Reus, 2021, 302 pp. (ISBN: 9788429024913)