The right to the slab as a new manifestation of property rights: reflections on its legal nature

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the legal nature of the right to the slab, a right recently incorporated into the Brazilian Civil Code following the conversion of Provisional Measure 759/2016 into Act No. 13.465/17, enacted on July 11, 2017. The paper seeks to assess the legislative origin of this new legal institute and, subsequently, to examine it in comparison with the classical conception of property rights and with surface rights, to which it bears certain similarities, as well as to highlight the divergences found in legal scholarship. Finally, the study attempts to determine the category to which the right to the slab belongs—whether it constitutes a right in rem over one’s own property or a right in rem over someone else’s property. The research was conducted through theoretical analysis, based on a bibliographic survey, and employed the dialectical method to support its conclusions. In this context, the study concludes that, despite the similarities with other property rights, the right to the slab constitutes an autonomous legal category—sui generis in nature—that should be classified as a right in rem over one’s own property, given its specific and singular legal features.