A dupla face do princípio da legalidade

Abstract

Item II Article 5 of the Federal Constitution of Brazil states that: no one is compelled to do or not do anything if not according to the law . It expresses what is known as the principle of legality. As a fruit of the so-called State of Law, it has followed political, economical and social transformations, as well as the development of Law Theory and Philosophy. Understanding it demands a rectrospective understanding of the major schools and trends of judicial thought of the last centuries. The scope of this undertaking is to demonstrate that, in the actual context, the principle of legality has two faces. In Public Law, it still represents the ideals of freedom and equality originated in the Age of the Enlightment, but in diferent modalities as it approaches Constitutional, Criminal, Tax or Administrative Law. However, in Private Law, the principle represents liberty conditioned by ethics and morality as conducted by law, in other words, liberty guided by fraternity. This study is exclusively based on library research. It involves history, economics, sociology, philosophy and law. The first parts ares focused on the investigation of the origin and evolution of the principle of legality. The final parts are dedicated to the analisys of the principle in present time. At the final part, the conclusions are presented in synthesis