Portuguese law

The Law of Portugal is the legal system that applies to Portugal. It is part of the family of the civil law legal systems, based on Roman law, having, so, many common features with the legal systems found in of most of the countries in Continental Europe.

In the 19th century, the French civil law was the main influence in the Law of Portugal. However, since the early 20th century, the major influence has been the German civil law. 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. European Union law is now a major driving force in many respects, such as corporate law, administrative law and civil procedure.

The Law of Portugal is the basis or, at least, influences more or less sharply the legal systems of the several countries of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries and of some other territories that were once part of the Portuguese Empire. Therefore, these legal systems share many common features which, occasionally, makes them to be considered as a separate branch (Lusophone Legal System) in the scope of the wider family of civil law legal systems.

The main Portuguese laws include the Constitution (1976, as amended), the Civil Code (1966, as amended), the Penal Code (1982, as amended), the Labor Code (2003, as amended) and the Commercial Societies Code (1986, as amended). The Commercial Code (1888, as amended) and the Administrative Code (1945, as amended) used to have a high importance in the past, but are now largely obsolete and partially replaced by new legislation.

As in most other European medieval countries, Portugal did not have centralized political institutions with the means to enact laws to regulate everyday legal issues. Both the wars against Castile and the Reconquista turned the Crown and the Court into an army permanently on the move. Some Portuguese legal historians claim that in the first two centuries after the Treaty of Zamora in 1143 - in which the León recognized Portuguese de facto sovereignty - the kingdom's political power was that of a "Warrior-State" that neither could, nor did, direct its resources to the organization of administrative institutions or to the productions of laws.

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