The Flag of Imagination: Peru's New Reform on Legal Capacity for Persons with Intellectual and Psychosocial Disabilities and the Need for New Understandings in Private Law

Abstract

This paper analyzes the recent reform regarding the legal capacity of persons with disabilities in Peru. It provides a domestic legal and judicial context in which the reform was adopted. Following this, the paper aims to analyze the reform’s conformity with article 12 of the Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, noting that the current regulation is only partially CRPD compliant. The current design of judicially designated supporters can be understood as valid under specific interpretations of Article 12, while the design of safeguards does not comply with such standard. The paper addresses the impact of legal capacity reform in traditional private law theory of the juridical act. Currently, the Peruvian system does not provide clear or accurate standards to respond to this problem. The paper shines a light on the need to rethink multiple concepts of private law in order to make legal capacity reform fully operational.