Understanding Brazilian law: Part IV – Declaratory statutes

Declaratory statute literally translated from Portuguese should be called “complementary law”, because its function is to complement some constitutional commands, not to declare them.

In this site we decided to use the substantive “declaratory statute” in order to make easier for common law countries’ readers to understand. Although, readers must be aware that Brazil is a Civil Law Country. Therefore, we do not have “statues” as in Common Law (reading the previous posts is recommended in order to understand that).

Declaratory statutes are just used when the Constitution itself literally requires them. For example, general rules on taxes must be defined by a declaratory statue (Constitution, article 146). If a general tax rule is in an ordinary law, it shall be declared unconstitutional.

However it is possible that a declaratory statute may be sometimes enacted to rule a regular subject. The Constitutional Court does not consider this unconstitutional because there is no prejudice. In fact, a declaratory statue must be approved by the majority of all congressmen. For an ordinary law to be approved it is only necessary the majority of the present ones.

As you may think, only some important issues are ruled by declaratory statutes.