Professional Orders. Constitutionalists and Orders agree with Marcelo’s decision (with José Luís Moreira da Silva)
Jose Luis Moreira da Silva, president of the Association of Law Firms in Portugal (ASAP) and partner of SRS Legal, welcomes the decision of the Head of State and admits that this new law “may call into question the immunities of lawyers, insofar as the Disciplinary power ceases to be self-regulated and becomes hetero-regulated, as most of the members who exercise the disciplinary function of lawyers are not lawyers”. The lawyer also maintains that the unconstitutionality may, on the contrary, also be sustained by “possible non-compliance with article 267, paragraph 4 of the Constitution, in which public associations can only be constituted for the satisfaction of specific needs, they cannot exercise functions typical of trade union associations and have an internal organization based on respect for the rights of their members and the democratic formation of their bodies”. The lawyer recalls that this rule, introduced in 1997, when Moreira da Silva was part of the…
