The president of the republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said this Friday that there is a “deflation” of the laws and asked the legislature to look at the Bar Association as a whole.
In a video message broadcast at the congress of Portuguese lawyers, which started in Fátima (Santarém), the head of state stated that “there was a hard core definition of acts proper to the law, such as acts proper to medical activities or other professional activities”, to emphasize that there has been “an exodus in the definition of this hard core”.
“The hard core is no longer the hard core, it’s very hard in the sense that it’s very delineated. People will say, ‘but that’s the way it is, it’s the evolution of society,'” he continued, pointing out point out that “every lawyer, every graduate, every legal expert, with the required academic qualifications, can practice several of these acts and many of them are already practiced through other professional activities within the world of justice”.
“And isn’t there still a hard core of advocacy? (…) To what extent can one desubstantiate what is the hard core of advocacy? Unless one understands that it is possible to exercise any activity as an exercise of citizenship with the minimum qualifications for it, namely academic,” the head of state asked.
Referring to the practice of law, which “has changed radically in number and in the way this activity is carried on”, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa pointed out that “alongside more sophisticated structures that support the practice of law by those who are bosses and the exercise of advocacy by those who work for third parties, other multidisciplinary organizations are emerging alongside these new organizations that, in accordance with the rules of European law, want to have a statute that allows them to promote the activity of lawyers”.
“Then there is another reality in Portuguese law, the other side, which is the thousands and thousands and thousands of lawyers all over the country who do not belong to multidisciplinary firms, do not belong to law firms and often practice in a situation of near poverty or to survive his role, his mission to serve the community,” he warned.
The president of the republic added that to talk about this reality “is to call the attention of the legislator when defining rules to think about the whole and not just the part”, since the law “in very different ways, with very different economic and financial statutes. different “those demands” rules that don’t just look at the part, at what the bar association was 60 years ago, 70 years ago, 80 years ago, maybe, maybe 50 or 40 years ago, but to what is the Bar Association dos Advogados and what is advocacy today”.
The president of the republic also said that he is known as “so many Portuguese are critical of justice in Portugal”.
“We know, as I myself have said, in various solemn openings of the judicial year (…), that justice is accused of being slow, very slow, asymmetrical, very unequal and therefore there are innumerable conjunctures not to say structural justice for the rich and justice for the poor,” he said.
Noting that “legislative reforms in the field of justice take forever to get to the facts, to appear first and then to act”, the head of state also asked: “And how often (…) has enacted the law which, because of its number and imperfection in technical terms, creates unnecessary difficulties for those who must apply this law?”.
To the hundreds of lawyers present at the congress, which ends on Sunday, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa thanked “how the work was in such a complex scenario and with so many complaints, some more honest, others less fair in relation to justice in Portugal” .
Source: DN
