Keywords
venire contra factum proprium non valet
actos propios
legitimate expectations
estoppel
verwirkung
How to Cite
Abstract
This article is the result of the research project “Interpretation and Application of Private Law” that has been carried out by the Study Group on private law in Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. In this text we analyse the importance of reliance in contract law and how different legal systems have adopted rules to make the parties’ behaviour as coherent as possible. The particular interest of this analysis is the difficulty to conciliate the different approaches that tend to restrict the possibilities of contradiction in contract law. The reader will find a study of the parties’ duty of coherence as it has been called by recent French doctrine, the roman rule of the venire contra factum proprium and other similar expressions like the estoppel of the common law, the German verwirkung and
finally the figures adopted in our Colombian system of law, like the actos propios and appearance theories and the protection of legitimate expectations. The frontiers among all the expressions above and the way each system tries to define when a contradictory behaviour should be accepted or not are not clear. Hence the relevance of this study.
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