Intellectual Foundations of Brazilian Economic Law

The subject of inquiry of this article is to analyse the intellectual foundations of Brazilian economic law. Accordingly, it aims at evaluating Brazilian economic law from a functional perspective, which seeks to explain the complex and gradual process in which the bases that cognitively nourish the tradition of Brazilian economic law were born, based on a finalistic-instrumental conception of law supported by social reality; its interplay with the theory of underdevelopment, from which the equation that political economy introduces as the cognitive basis of Brazilian economic law is drawn, in the search for development; as well as with the logic of the Economic and Ruling Constitution, which outlines the entailment between the actions of the developmentalist state and certain rules, principles and ends; and, finally, its epistemological framework in Brazil, based on an articulated reading of the works of Alberto Venancio Filho, Washington Peluso Albino de Souza, Geraldo Vidigal, Fábio Konder Comparato, Eros Roberto Grau and Gilberto Bercovici. The article’s primary aim is to provide support for understanding the panorama of economic law in Brazil, within the scope of the outlined intellectual foundations. It concludes that Brazilian economic law can function as a legal path to development, which allows us to visualize an alternative model to the neoliberal economic system currently in effect.