200 YEARS OF 23 CONSTITUENT: PRE-CONSTITUTIONAL LEGAL RULES

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article is based on post-doctoral research at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in the years 2016/2017. In the field of constitutional law, it deals with the existence of successive acts, almost all them written, normative, in the period of the years 1821/1823, which precede the convening of the constituent assembly of 1823, and subsequent to its meeting and dissolution, until the bestow of the Constitution of 1824. The objective was to confirm the existence of pre-constitutional norms, studied in a previous publication, capable of pre-conforming the exercise of constituent power by the assembly, and even in the formal act of bestowing the Constitution. A primary research of documents, bibliography, was carried out through the historical-dialectical method. The initial hypothesis is confirmed, with necessary adjustments. The examination of the decrees, content and circumstances, allows us to perceive a line of continuity towards the process of liberal constitutionalization, while the line of access to national sovereignty is elliptical, recedes and advances, in a second stage. The text of the 1824 constitution is virtually the consolidation of everything that was built in the period between February 1821 and March 1824.

Keywords: Brazil; Independence; Constituent Assembly, Constitution of 1824; Pre-Constitutional Legal Rules.