The Time of Rights: Prescription and Filing Periods as Different Thresholds

Abstract

This volume asks whether relief can be barred because the time for proceedings has run, even though the right itself survives. The time at which a right becomes exercisable, the interruption of prescription, peremptory periods, and subsequent completion are distinct institutions. An expiry date without the facts establishing the starting point is not a conclusion. The path to relief opens where the facts establishing the starting point and the period under the applicable rule are connected with grounds for interruption or subsequent completion so that the exercise of the right in question is permitted, and closes where the relevant period has passed and the requirements for relief applicable to that proceeding, such as interruption or subsequent completion, are also not satisfied. The six sections address, in turn, the different kinds of time, when a right can be exercised, the statutory grounds for interruption, failed judicial claims, impediments for subsequent completion, and the facts that precede writing a date. The strongest counterargument is as follows. The strictness of periods may shift onto the right holder even impediments that the right holder could not control. Integrated schedule management and the reconstruction of times from the original records are not addressed in this volume.