La “professio iuris” sucesoria a las puertas de una reglamentación comunitaria

Abstract

During the Middle Age, the parties to a juridical transaction declared by means of professionesjuris which was the law of their race, to which they wanted to subject that transaction. In Switzerland by the end of the 19th century, the terminology was rescued to give name to an institution of private international law by which the testator was limitedlyallowed to choose the applicable law to his succession upon death. This modern professio juris experienced an enormous impulse when it was included in The Hague Convention of 1989 on the Law Applicable to Succession to the Estates of Deceased Persons,since the text of the Convention has been used as a model to important posterior legislations. Among them figures the European Proposal for a Regulation in the field of successions. That Proposal allows the deceased to choose expressly his national law to govern the succession as a whole, without regarding as contrary to the public policy a detrimental outcome for the forced heirs.