Constitutional Court of Portugal

1 A FEWWORDS FROM THE PRESIDENT To mark its 30 th Anniversary, the Constitutional Court has decided to publish this short book with the idea of telling citizens “what it is, what it’s for and how it works”. Our goal is to provide information in simple but accurate terms about the Court’s nature, competences and functions and thereby combat the knowledge barriers that still exist today. The Constitutional Court is not a “court like the others”, but rather an autonomous organ that does not form part of the judicial system. While the Court is also entrusted with a varied range of important extra- jurisdictional competences, which the booklet briefly summarises, Article 221 of the Constitution charges it with its primordial task: “to administer justice in matters of a constitutional-law nature”. On the occasion of the commemoration of the Court’s tenth anniversary, the then President of the Republic described the way in which the Court had performed its functions as “a priceless contribution to the affirmation and definition of a state based on the rule of law in our country”. In particular, the Court’s jurisprudence in the constitutional review field is the embodiment of all its Constitutional interpretation activities, which can be said to have made a valuable contribution to a more precise identification of the normative criteria that can be inferred from the “Fundamental Law”. Committed to pursuing the path that has been opened up over the last thirty years, the current collection of Constitutional Court Justices fully assumes its part of the responsibility to help ensure that citizens have the tools they need to clearly understand and evaluate the Court’s work. The publication of this brochure in Portuguese will be accompanied by that of an English version, which will enable our counterpart courts in other countries and foreign citizens in general to find out about the Portuguese Constitutional Court’s competences and the way it works at a glance. (Joaquim de Sousa Ribeiro) CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF PORTUGAL