Subjective Rights and Legal Duties

Content of the Legal Relationship: Subjective Rights and Legal Duties

• The expression "subjective right" alludes to the attribution or prerogative that the subject has to demand a certain conduct from another or others.
• It represents a power granted by the legal system to a will.
• The law dictates a rule of conduct that is made available to the person in whose favor such rule has been dictated.

Types of Rights

• Legitimate interest: It does not seek the immediate satisfaction of one's own interest, although it may indirectly benefit it.
• Simple interest: The deadline to claim has expired.
• Legal duty: It has a duty to satisfy that performance. In certain circumstances, the duty is generic, corresponding to the entire community.
• Burden: It requires the sacrifice of one's own interest to satisfy another's interest.

Classification of Civil Subjective Rights

• Patrimonial Rights: Tangible rights that have a value in money that protect economic interests.
• Extra-Patrimonial Rights: They act primarily in relation to interests of moral order (rights of personality, of family).
• Collective Impact Rights: They identify the interest that certain rights are respected (i.e. the environment).

Individual Rights

• Right to a name

Article 14 of the Civil and Commercial Code (CCC)

• Recognizes individual rights and collective impact rights.
• The law does not protect the abusive exercise of individual rights when it may affect the environment and collective impact rights in general.

Exercise of Rights: Principle of Good Faith

• "Obrar de buena fe" implies behaving with honesty, loyalty, and rectitude.
• Good faith is a general principle of law that is projected throughout the legal system.

Article 9 of the Civil and Commercial Code (CCC)

• Rights should be exercised in good faith.

Abuse of Right

• Doctrine of abuse of right has emerged as a reaction to the absolute concept of subjective right

Article 10 of the Civil and Commercial Code (CCC)

• The regular exercise of one's own right or the fulfillment of a legal obligation cannot constitute an illicit act.
• The law does not protect the abusive exercise of rights.
• Defined as that which contradicts the purposes of the legal system or exceeds the limits imposed by good faith, morals, and good customs.
• The judge must order what is necessary to avoid the effects of the abusive exercise of the legal situation and, if applicable, seek to restore the situation to the prior state and set compensation.

Criteria for Abuse of Right

• Subjective: The subject acts abusively when done with the intention of harming another.
• Objective: The rights are conferred with a purpose, and lose their character when the holder deviates from the purpose that justifies their existence.

Mixed

• An abusive act exists when there is an intention to harm or when the exercise of the right deviates from its intended purpose.

Article 11 of the Civil and Commercial Code (CCC)

• Applies when there is abuse of a dominant position in the market.
• A company has the possibility of independent behavior that puts it in a position to act without taking into account competitors, buyers, etc.

Abusive Legal Situation

• A series of acts that connected produce an abuse, contrary to the order.
• A legal situation exists when the abuse is the result of the exercise of a plurality of rights.

Consequences of Abuse of Right

• The abuse is a legitimate cause for paralyzing the right diverted from its regular purposes.
• The legal act performed in such conditions is invalid and the action that may be deduced must be rejected.
• The abuse compromises the responsibility of the holder of the right who exercises their powers abusively, obliging them to compensate for the damage.

Public Order & Fraud of Law

• Individual agreements cannot nullify laws that are of public interest.

Article 12 of the Civil and Commercial Code (CCC): Public Order

• An act that invokes the protection of a legal text, which pursues a result substantially analogous to that prohibited by a mandatory rule, is considered granted in fraud of the law.

Article 13

• The general waiver of laws is prohibited.

Rights and Goods

• Goods are those intangible objects that have a value.
• A good is anything that has value, whether material or not.
• Things are material objects susceptible to have an economic value.

Article 16 of the Civil and Commercial Code (CCC)

• The rights referred to in the first paragraph of article 15 may fall on goods susceptible to economic value. Material goods are called things.

Article 17 of the Civil and Commercial Code (CCC)

• Rights over the human body or its parts do not have a commercial value, but rather an affective, therapeutic, scientific, humanitarian or social one.

Rights of Indigenous Communities

• Respect for the cultures

Article 18 of the Civil and Commercial Code (CCC)

• Recognized indigenous communities have the right to the possession and community ownership of the lands they traditionally occupy.