The courts and the economic and financial crisis
The economic and financial crisis that hit Portugal particularly hard from 2008 onwards has been the subject of research, analysis and comment from a number of perspectives, with its causes and effects being questioned by different disciplines. Legal and socio-legal studies have not been immune to this wave of academic production, which has focused in particular on the repercussions of the crisis and the law resulting from the crisis on certain branches of law and several areas of law.
However, a general and comprehensive approach that could provide the essential empirical data for an analysis of how Portuguese jurisprudence has reacted to the performative impulses arising from the economic and financial crisis had not yet been undertaken. This study by Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos aims to help fill this gap by systematically investigating the main dynamics of the decision-making process in national courts in the context of the crisis. In fact, the courts have been called upon to settle disputes where the law arising from the many austerity packages that Portugal was subject to is discussed, or where the factual context of the economic and financial crisis is raised. In this scenario, the question arises as to what role the crisis plays in judicial decision-making.
In order to find an answer to this question, this study looks at:
- the impact of the crisis on decision-making
- the relationship between the Constitutional Court and other jurisdictions
- the incorporation of the crisis into judicial discourse
- references to the crisis in judicial discourse
- the differences in the decisions of the different courts in the way they have highlighted the crisis
Based on an analysis of 557 decisions handed down by the Portuguese higher courts, this study proposes a detailed and well-founded portrait of the impact of the crisis on judicial discourse and how the decisions of the different courts have behaved in the face of this phenomenon that has transformed our collective life.
