Economic limits to contractual performance: from hardship to the excessive costs of specific performance Rodrigo Momberg Uribe* and A ´ lvaro Vidal Olivares † Abstract This article analyses two different limits to specific performance of contracts: hardship and excessive or unreasonable costs, looking into their conditions, scope of application, and effects, with the aim of outlining their corresponding field of application, intending to solve the current confusions on the subject. I. The problem Contract law recognizes that an obligee affected by non-performance has, among other remedies, the right to require specific performance—that is, a claim to require the obligor the fulfilment of what has been agreed in accord- ance with the contract. In the civil law tradition, the obligee is the holder of a right to specifically enforce what has been agreed to, this being one of the main effects of the principle of binding force of contracts. 1 Therefore, if the obligee requires performance, the court must generally recognize the obligee’s right and order the obligor to comply. However, in civil law jurisdictions, even with no express rule, it has been recognized that the obligee is subject to certain limits in the exercise of its right to claim specific performance, such as the *Rodrigo Momberg Uribe, Professor of Private Law, Pontificia Universidad Cato ´ lica de Valpara  ıso, Chile. PhD, Utrecht University. Email rodrigo.momberg@pucv.cl † A ´ lvaro Vidal Olivares, Professor of Private Law, Pontificia Universidad Cato ´ lica de Valpara  ıso, Chile. Doctor Iuris, Universidad Auto ´ noma de Madrid. Email: alvaro.vidal@pucv.cl. This article is part of the research projects Fondecyt Regular no. 1181212 and Fondecyt Regular no. 1200734. 1 For a comparative overview of specific performance, see Hugh Beale, B en edicte Fauvarque- Cosson, Jacobine Rutgers and Stefan Vogenauer, Cases, Materials and Text on Contract Law (3rd edition, Hart Publishing, Oxford and Portland 2019), 905–55. The situation in Latin American contract law is examined in A ´ lvaro Vidal-Olivares, ‘El incumplimiento contractual y pretensio ´n de cumplimiento espec  ıfico en los principios latinoamericanos de Derecho de contratos (PLDC)’, El derecho comu ´n europeo de la modernizacio ´n del derecho de contratos (Atelier, Barcelona 2015) 745–67. For a general analysis of the system of remedies in the common law, see Andrew Burrows, Remedies for Torts and Breach of Contract (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004). V C The Author(s) (2022). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of UNIDROIT. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email journals.permissions@oup.com Unif. L. Rev., 2022, 1–16 https://doi.org/10.1093/ulr/unac004 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ulr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ulr/unac004/6588160 by guest on 19 May 2022