Legal Protection of For-profit Legal Entities

On 7 June 2018, the Portuguese Constitutional Court published a judgment1 that declared the unconstitutionality, with general mandatory force, of the rule contained in article 7(3) of the Law on Access to the Law and to the Courts2. Specifically, the court held that the part of this rule that refuses legal protection to for-profit legal entities, without giving consideration to their actual economic situation, was unconstitutional because it violates article 20(1) of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.