Anatocism: past, present and future of a lending practice alwaysunder scrutiny. An overview from the commercial lawperspective.

Abstract

The present essay studies the institute ofanatocism from the perspective of commerciallaw. It pretends to discard the pejorative orpurely economistic visions that link it withusury and approach its study from the legalframework. For this, it is proposed to penetratethe general concepts, go into its history, and its regulation in the Civil Code and theCommercial Code, up to the current regulationin the Civil and Commercial Code, all of that,without overlooking the investigation of how itis regulated in the Common Law and theMercosur countries. To focus on the mostrelevant aspects of a mechanism that has beenrepeatedly stigmatized, labeled as reprehensibleand restricted, to help us see that, contrary towhat has been maintained and generalized, itcould entail a moralizing function, to beunderstood as its ultimate goal trying to makeeffective a compensator y intention preventingthe debtor from being rewarded or compensated,because the conduct of the debtor is the onethat corresponds to be reprehensible.