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Tag: Comparative law

Trusts in Latin America and the circulation of legal ideas: Part One

Trusts in Latin America and the circulation of legal ideas: Part One

Published 9th April 2026

Part One: English influences in the Chilean Fideicomiso

By León Carmona Fontaine, Assistant Professor of Private Law at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Latin American and most European jurisdictions are commonly regarded as civil law jurisdictions. Yet one notable difference between the two is that trust instruments were introduced in Latin America much earlier than in Europe. Panama (1925), Mexico (1926), El Salvador (1926), and Puerto Rico (1928) were pioneers of this development, followed by Venezuela (1956) and Colombia (1971), whereas Argentina (1995) and Uruguay (2003) adopted such instruments at a later stage. By contrast, with the exception of Liechtenstein (1926), European civil law jurisdictions introduced trust instruments considerably later, and primarily due to the influence of the Hague Trusts Convention. Romania (2011), the Czech Republic (2014), and Hungary (2014) are examples of this much later development.

One explanation for this divergence between Europe and Latin America lies in the stronger influence of the United States in Latin America. However, there is also another factor that has received far less attention so far: the influence that English law may have exercised on the fideicomiso as regulated in the Chilean Civil Code of 1855, and the role that the Chilean fideicomiso played in the introduction of trust instruments in other jurisdictions of Latin America. As this entry and a forthcoming one argue, there are several reasons to believe that the fideicomiso provided for in the Chilean Civil Code was influenced by English legal ideas and later functioned as an important bridge for the introduction of trust instruments in Latin America.

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New insights through defamiliarization

New insights through defamiliarization

Published 20th August 2025

By Anna Bleichenbacher, PhD student, University of Basel[1]

I. Prologue

Compare how it felt to speak your first words in a foreign language with how it feels now after years of practice. Once we can do things as a matter of habit, they start to become automatic for us. Deliberately framing something in a different perspective – what the Russian literary theorist Shklovsky said about the role of art in his concept of ‘defamiliarization’ (‘ostranenie’)[2] – challenges that automatic response. Defamiliarization is also possible in legal research. It enables us to take a new look at our own jurisdiction and how we work within it.[3] Studying and researching only in our home jurisdiction makes everything we do there feel natural to us – even inevitable. All that changes once we see it from the outside.

Breaking through this habituation and seeing familiar things with new eyes can be facilitated by a research stay abroad. In 2024 the author of this blog entry undertook a six-month research stay at the University of Edinburgh. This entry deals with the differences in the research and teaching between Edinburgh and Basel, as well as the new perspectives the author gained from her time abroad. She experienced an ‘ostranenie’ that challenged her automatic assumptions of how the law had to be.

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Continuity, Influences and Integration in Scottish Legal History: Select Essays of David Sellar, edited by Hector L MacQueen (Edinburgh Studies in Law, Edinburgh University Press, 2022)

Continuity, Influences and Integration in Scottish Legal History: Select Essays of David Sellar, edited by Hector L MacQueen (Edinburgh Studies in Law, Edinburgh University Press, 2022)

Published 9th March 2022

By Hector MacQueen, Emeritus Professor of Private Law, University of Edinburgh

David Sellar (1941-2019) was a pioneering historian of Scots law who convincingly and conclusively rejected previous interpretations of the subject as a series of false starts and rejected experiments. He emphasised instead the continuity of legal development in Scotland, with change a process of integration of external influences with indigenous customs from very early times on. Thus down to the present Scots law embraces Celtic and other customary elements reaching far back into its past, while also having been open to innovation from the developing Canon, Civil, Feudal and English Common law since the middle ages. This too has left deep marks upon the law’s character as a “mixed legal system”.

David’s approach, articulated mainly through essays published in diverse places over four decades, has had significant influence upon general understanding of legal history in Scotland as well as leading to appreciation elsewhere of its comparative significance. Gathering his major essays together in this single collection demonstrates the scope and reach of David’s overall contribution; it is perhaps an approximation to the monograph that he was not spared to write. What distinguishes the contribution from others in the field is the perspective that David himself brought to bear, which was one no other writer in the field could achieve, especially in relation to Celtic and Canon law.

Continue readingContinuity, Influences and Integration in Scottish Legal History: Select Essays of David Sellar, edited by Hector L MacQueen (Edinburgh Studies in Law, Edinburgh University Press, 2022)
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