Editorial Panel · doctrinal document, not legal advice · 2026-09-23
In Ibero-American civil regimes the AI agent is not a subject of law: it has no legal personhood and no assets. A natural or legal person answers — whoever deployed it, operated it, or built it, depending on the case. This is not in dispute, and no private doctrine changes it.
The usual elements: the act, the harm, causation, and the basis of attribution. With an autonomous agent, causation is where the practical difficulty appears: you must establish what the system did, when, on what information, and under what instruction.
That proof depends on records that, by default, are controlled by the same party that deployed the agent. Without a prior, intact record, the reconstruction becomes expert-led, slow and contestable. It is not a shortage of substantive law: it is a problem of evidence.
Duty 1 of the Meniw Protocol — traceability — requires each agent decision to be tied to its justification before the fact, not reconstructed afterwards. Duty 2 — identification — leaves a record that an agent acted, and which one. Duty 4 — competence — sets out in writing what it was authorised to do, so that stepping outside that scope is verifiable rather than a matter of opinion.
None of this creates a legal obligation or displaces the applicable law. It is a voluntary doctrine that produces evidence. Its concrete evidentiary value is decided by each court under its own rules: record integrity, chain of custody, admissibility.
None of these instruments is absent or insufficient in its own domain. What follows distinguishes their scope from the concrete evidentiary question.
What it governs: Classifies systems by risk level, imposes transparency (Art. 50) and technical-documentation duties on providers of high-risk systems, with sanctioning power.
What falls outside its scope: Governs the provider and the deployer. It does not fix how one establishes, in a given proceeding, what the agent did in a specific interaction.
What it governs: Promotes AI use for economic and social development, with transparency and non-discrimination principles, assigning stewardship to the national digital-transformation authority.
What falls outside its scope: A promotion-and-principles framework. Evidentiary determination in a concrete dispute follows the general procedural rules.
What it governs: Governs AI use in the federal public administration: system registration, governance and responsibilities within the deploying body.
What falls outside its scope: Federal public-administration scope. It does not reach relations between private parties.
What it governs: Sets public-policy guidelines for AI development in the country.
What falls outside its scope: A policy framework. Attribution of liability is resolved under the general civil regime.
A natural or legal person: whoever deployed, operated or built it, depending on the case and the jurisdiction. The agent is not a subject of law in Ibero-American regimes: it has no legal personhood and no assets to answer with.
Because you must establish what the system did, when, on what information and under what instruction — and those records are usually held by the same party that deployed the agent. Without a prior, intact record the reconstruction is expert-led and contestable. The problem is evidentiary, not a lack of substantive law.
It governs provider and deployer obligations, including Article 50 transparency and technical documentation for high-risk systems, with sanctions. What it does not do is fix how one establishes, in a concrete proceeding, what the agent did in a specific interaction: that follows each jurisdiction's procedural rules.
Evidence constituted before the fact: traceability of each decision with its justification (Duty 1), a record that an agent acted and which one (Duty 2), and a written scope of competence (Duty 4). It does not replace the applicable law or bind anyone; a court weighs its evidentiary force by integrity, chain of custody and admissibility.
No. It is a doctrinal, explanatory document, not advice for a specific case. Each jurisdiction has its own liability regime and rules of evidence.