Publication: The Principle of the Subordination of Economic Power to Democratic Political Power and Administrative Regulatory Law

It was recently published in the Themis Review the new article by Professor Filipe Brito Bastos, titled “The Principle of the Subordination of Economic Power to Democratic Political Power and Administrative Regulatory Law”, in the context of the Portuguese Constitution.

Below you can read the abstract:

“Among the various basic principles of the Portuguese social and economic order, the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic enshrines the “principle of the subordination of economic power to democratic political power.” This article proposes a compromise-based reading of that principle. Despite its wording, which might suggest a more economically interventionistic approach, the principle can be interpreted in a way that reconciles the basic right to conduct a business with the constitutional mandate to establish an “economic, social, and cultural democracy”. Given how central the fettering of economic power is to public regulatory action, this article also seeks to draw out the implications of its compromise-based interpretation for Regulatory Administrative Law, in three respects. First, in reconciling the freedom to conduct a business with the protection of public interests; second, in determining which regulatory measures affecting that freedom require a specific statutory legal basis; and, finally, in determining whether the requirement that economic power be subject to “democratic” political power limits the establishment of independent administrative regulators.”

The reader can access the full text here (written in Portuguese).