Understanding Law, Economy, and Trade: Key Concepts

Posted on Mar 3, 2025 in Law & Jurisprudence

Key Concepts: Law, Economy, and Trade

Law (Legal Statement)

The set of rules for external behavior, bilateral, imperative, coercive, and comprehensive, effectively regulating the behavior of people in society and at a specific historical moment, with the aim of establishing a just ordering of human society.

Classification of Law

  • Public Law: Constitutional, Administrative, Litigation, Criminal, Tax.
  • Private Law: Civil, Commercial, Labor.

Sources of Law

The State Constitution, The Law, Decrees with the force of law, Law Decrees, International treaties, The regulatory authority, Court rulings, Customary law, Legal doctrine.

People (Legal Entities)

Entities operating in the field of legal relations with the capacity to acquire rights and incur obligations.

Individuals

All members of the human species, regardless of age, sex, race, or status.

Legal Persons (Fictitious Persons)

Entities capable of exercising rights and obligations and being represented in and out of court.

Legal Persons of Public Law

Institutions funded with tax dollars, such as the State Treasury and municipalities.

Legal Persons of Private Law
  • For-Profit: Companies, defined as partnerships where two or more people provide something in common with a view to dividing the benefits derived from it. Examples: Corporate Law Group, Partnerships, Limited Companies, Anonymous Companies, EIRL.
  • Non-Profit:
    • Corporations: Groups that seek to achieve a lawful, non-profit purpose.
    • Foundations: Consist of assets intended by a founder to achieve a lawful, non-profit purpose.
Special Legal Persons

Those whose features are not apparent from the above, such as neighborhood associations and unions.

Personality Attributes

Name, Capacity to enjoy, Nationality, Home, Heritage, Civil Status.

Economy Concept

Human needs are unlimited, while the goods and resources to meet those needs are limited (The science of scarcity).

Economic Activities

  • Primary Sector: Involves the extraction of goods from nature.
  • Secondary Sector: Involves the transformation of raw materials.
  • Tertiary Sector: Involves the exchange of goods and services.

Trade

  1. An activity related to goods or negotiations concerning trade in goods (Tertiary income activity).
  2. The economic activity of exchanging goods, values, knowledge, and services between two or more people in a society that buys, sells, or exchanges goods that have been produced for consumption.
  3. Economic activity involving commercial transactions, including the purchase, sale, or exchange of goods or securities for profit.

Importance of Trade

Meeting the needs of consumers, achieving economic profit for the retailer, and linking two key sectors within the economy: production and consumption sectors that are vital to the development of socio-economic activities in the country.

Commercial Law

The set of legal rules intended to regulate a branch of economic activity.

Sources of Commercial Law

  1. Commercial Code, Civil Code, Customary Commercial Practices, International treaties and conventions.
  2. Constitution, Commercial Code, Supplementary Laws.

Merchant

A person who has the capacity to contract and whose profession involves trade.

Trade Acts

Acts of intermediary goods and services covered by commercial law.

Company

A contract in which two or more persons provide something in common with a view to dividing the benefits they derive.

Art 3°, No. 1

Acts of purchase and barter trade of personal property, made with the intention to sell, swap, or lease in the same way or in another form, and the sale, exchange, or lease of these same things.

N° 2

The purchase of a business establishment.

N° 10

Operations on bills of exchange, promissory notes, and checks on the order documents, whatever their cause and purpose and the people who take part in it, and remittances of money from one place to another made under a contract change.

Incorporation Requirements

  • Writing: Members, Company Name, Initial capital, Economic activity, Address, Duration, The name or corporate name must include the word “limited”.
  • Signature: Signed before a notary.
  • Extract: Must be published in the official gazette.
  • Conservative: Must be registered in the real estate registry.
  • SII: Must assign a RUT processed for the company.