/tags/interest-rate-caps/Recent content in Interest Rate Caps on Lawyering As CodeHugoenSat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0700/posts/14_contract-drafting-108-judgments/Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0700/posts/14_contract-drafting-108-judgments/<h2 id="abstract">Abstract</h2> <p>A drafter who opens the Civil Code for guidance on what a court will enforce finds permissions and pointers, not rules: a loan is formed by agreement alone, interest is capped at &ldquo;the limited interest rate specified by law&rdquo;, and an unfixed rate falls to the legal rate. The operative answers sit in what benches have done with the paper. This article reads 108 Cambodian judgments issued between February 2015 and July 2020 — overwhelmingly first instance, with one cassation and one appeal — to ask a narrow question: when a court enforced a contract term, what was on the document that let it? The method is empirical and documentary: every judgment read, every operative order extracted, every drafting rule tied to the case that enforced or refused it, every citation checked against the text. The finding is that the instrument, not the statute, decides contract cases, and that it is judged on what appears on its face. Stated terms are enforced, occasionally at rates the Code nowhere authorises; absent, implied, oral or vague terms are not, and they fail even where the defendant never appears. Three consequences follow: interest above the ceiling is rewritten rather than refused; a delay clause above that ceiling is enforced by most benches and cut by one; and a preferential right is recognised on a registered instrument over an identified title. This is what these judgments did, not what the law requires.</p>