Law of Portugal
This growing of the Germanistic influence was mainly driven by works on civil law developed by legal theorists of the University of Coimbra under the leadership of professor Guilherme Alves Moreira, who published his decisive Instituições de Direito Civil from 1906 to 1916.
As in most other European medieval countries, Portugal did not have centralized political institutions that would enact statutory law on an averyday basis.
[3] After the establishment of independent Kingdom of Portugal in 1143, the historical evolution of its law can be generically divided in the following periods: However, following the 1383–85 Crisis, the beginning of the age of Portuguese Discoveries and the establishment and growing of the overseas empire, the Kings of Portugal were able to grow politically stronger.
These attempts to codify the law were not only a way to unify and bring together the local legal traditions from the whole Kingdom, but also to correct some customs that the Crown thought were unreasonable.
The first of these ordinances was created by the initiative of King Edward, under the lead of Doctor of Law Rui Fernandes [pt].
Their first draft was presented in 1446, but they were only definitively reviewed and approved in 1454, already in the reign of Afonso V, so becoming known as the Alfonsine Ordinances (Ordenações Afonsinas).
These included the amendments made since the beginning of the 20th century in order to tilt the Portuguese civil law towards the approach of the German legal system, by the influence of the ideas defended by the legal theorists of the University of Coimbra, headed by professor Guilherme Alves Moreira.
It continued to be in force until today in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe, even after the independence of these countries in the period of 1974–1975.
After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, the Portuguese legal system was changed due to the new political and civil demands.
The new Constitution approved in 1976, was written under a myriad of communist and socialist-inspired ideologies and bias in order to replace the previous regime's system.
[4][5] Already internationally known for decades as excruciatingly slow and inefficient for European Union and USA standards, Portugal's justice system was by 2011 the second slowest in Western Europe after Italy's, even though it has one of the highest rates of judges and prosecutors, over 30 per 100,000 people, a feature that plagued the entire Portuguese public service, reputed for its overcapacity, useless redundancies and a general lack of productivity as a whole.
After the collapse of the Portuguese public finances and banking system in 2011 amid the larger European sovereign debt crisis that impelled Portugal to European Union-International Monetary Fund state bailout, many reforms were put in place and measures to cut down costs and increase productivity were enforced across the entire public service.
The promulgation is the act by which the President solemnly testifies the existence of a rule of law and intimates its observation.
The veto can be exceeded if the bill is voted and approved by of more than two-thirds of the members of parliament, in which case the President is obliged to promulgate it.
After the promulgation, the act is sent to the Government for a ministerial referenda and then is published in the Diário da República (official journal) as a law.
If the date of effectiveness is not expressly defined in the law, a vacatio legis of five days is assumed by default.
The several types of laws, acts and statutes of Portugal constitute a hierarchic legislative system, with several ranks.
Regarding the other major branches of the law, they are mainly covered by the following codes: In the world, Portugal was a pioneer in the process of abolishment of the capital punishment.
A possible execution of a soldier of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps carried out in France during World War One remains poorly documented.
Besides having abolished the life imprisonment, Portugal is the only country in the world that considers that this type of punishment—both for minors and majors, with or without the possibility of parole - is a violation of the human rights.
Being considered the most liberal of its kind in the world, it allows for transsexual people to change their name and sex in legal documentation.
However, the offense was changed from a criminal one, with prison as a possible punishment, to an administrative one if the amount possessed was no more than ten days' supply of that substance.
At the time of the Indian occupation of those territories (1954 for Dadra and Nagar Haveli and 1961 for Goa, Daman and Diu) the Portuguese laws were effective there, namely the Civil Code of 1868, although with local adaptations mainly related with their application to the Hindu community.
The Portuguese legal system was maintained after the occupation, although rapidly becoming altered by the influence of the English common law applied in the rest of India.
This code has been suggested to serve as the basis for a future uniform civil code of India, intended to replace the personal laws based on the scriptures and customs of each major religious community in the country with a common set governing every citizen.
The agreements between Portugal and China regarding the handover of the administration of Macau state that the Portuguese legal system would continue in force in the territory for 50 years.
Lisbon's faculty is linked to personalities such as Marcelo Caetano, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, António de Menezes Cordeiro, Jorge Miranda, António Vitorino, José Manuel Barroso, Adriano Moreira and Mário Soares.
Coimbra's faculty is linked to personalities like António de Oliveira Salazar, Laura Rio and Almeida Santos.
The School of Law of the Portuguese Catholic University is also highly reputed, achieving notability by its academic publications, the curriculum of its teaching staff and the number of well-connected alumni it harbors.
In the 1990s, the offer of law degrees in Portugal became widespread across the entire country through both public and private university institutions.
