Judiciary of Portugal

The Portuguese courts are divided by four independent orders, each of which corresponds to the separate Constitutional, Judicial, Administrative and Auditors jurisdictions.

The Portuguese judiciary system is not unitary, but it is instead divided in four independent categories or orders of courts: Constitutional, Judicial, Administrative and Auditors.

It is a special court, mainly tasked with reviewing the constitutionality of newly approved laws, but it also has important powers related to the President of the Republic, the political parties and referendums.

The judges of the Constitutional Court are independent from the other branches of government, such as the executive or the legislature, and cannot be impeached.

For the purpose of the Judicial order, until 2014, Portugal was divided in 231 uneven comarcas, constituting the territorial areas of jurisdiction of the courts of first instance.

Depending on the size of its population, each comarca could have from a single court of general jurisdiction with just a single judge to a complex structure of diverse courts of special jurisdiction (civil, criminal, criminal procedure, labour, family, etc.

Following the judiciary organization reform of 2014, the country is now divided in 23 larger comarcas, all of them having, each one, a single judicial court of first instance, with general jurisdiction.

The comarca courts are typically installed in monumental courthouses, called palácios da Justiça (palaces of Justice), many of them built between the 1940s and the 1960s.

They constitute a hierarchical system that has the Supreme Administrative Court (Supremo Tribunal Administrativo) in Lisbon as its superior body.

It has both pure court functions (namely the supervision of the legality of the public expenses and the judging of public accounting) and also advising functions (namely to give opinion about the State accounts, alloying the Parliament to analyze them and decide).

The judges of the Auditors Court are chosen through civil service examination and have the title of conselheiros (counselors).

Each of these courts would be composed by members of the military with a higher rank than the defendants and by a person with a degree in Law (preferable a judge, if available).

It is an hierarchic organized body, composed of magistrates and headed by the Attorney-General of the Republic (Procurador-Geral da República), being totally independent from the executive and other branches of Government.

The Ministry of Justice (Ministério da Justiça) is the department of the Government of Portugal responsible to conceive, conduct, execute and assess the Justice policy defined by the Assembly of the Republic and by the Government and to assure the relationship of the Government with the courts, the Public Ministry, the Higher Council of Magistrates and the Higher Council of the Administrative and Tax Courts.

As part of its responsibilities, it administers the judiciary system, with functions that include the payment of salaries and the construction of courthouses.

The access to the careers of judges implies the graduation in a special school of magistrates, the Centro de Estudos Judiciários (Judicial Studies Center) or CEJ.

The attorneys of the Public Ministry are magistrates as the judges, but constitute a parallel and independent body from the Judicial Magistracy.

The Vice-Procurador-Geral da República (vice-attorney-general) is a magistrate with mandatory origin in the Public Ministry career magistracy.

The legal representation by a barrister is considered an essential element in the administration of Justice and is admissible in any proceedings.

Being member of those professional associations is a mandatory condition for the practice of the professions of barrister or solicitor.