The social role of the contract in Brazilian law and the Brazilian Economic Freedom Act

Abstract

After several decades of the advocacy for social standards regarding the rights of property and to contract, which were set forth in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, the Brazilian Consumer Defense Code and the 2002 Civil Code, there has been a growth on the support of economic freedom and the private autonomy of contractors, in particular in symmetric contracts, which are executed by parties of similar or reasonably similar symmetry, as is the case of many commercial contracts. In this case, government act n. 881/2019, later enacted as Act n. 13,874 of 2019 established a new rationale for the social role of contract standard set forth on article 421 of Brazilian Civil Code.