Theory of Imprevision, a Legal Mechanism for Restoring of the Contractual Justice

It is very difficult to conceive a legal system that may not contain the principle according to which legal conventions concluded have the power of law between the contracting parties. Keeping one's word is one of the pillars of all current legal systems and of the Roman one or even others considered as more primitive. As any legal principle, it has certain limits that are equally important as the principle itself. Among these limits, the principle of binding force of the contract, pacta sunt servanda, there is one recently introduced in the Romanian legal system, namely the theory of imprevision, a legal mechanism by which they follow, above all, the restoration of contractual justice. Imprevision, which is the less visible and contradictory part of the pacta sunt servanda principle, is generated by a social-economic reality appeared following some drastic and unpredictable changes of the conditions in which a contract is to be executed with respect to the aspects envisaged by the parties upon the conclusion thereof. The theory of imprevision aims at answering the debtor's situation if any unpredictable events that bring prejudice to the balance of services should occur, balance that was considered by the contracting parties upon the conclusion of contract when the agreement was formed. As a principle, before the coming into effect of the New Civil code, the Romanian courts refused to enforce the theory of imprevision, except for some cases related to the reevaluation of rents. This principle adopted both by the law courts relied on the strict interpretation of contractual provisions and the inexistence of some express legal provisions that might allow the judge to intervene in a contract, and arguments from the practice of international commercial transactions are brought to support the enforcement of the theory of imprevision.