page_title: Judiciary of Portugal
section_title: Judicial courts
hierarchical_section_title: Judiciary of Portugal / Orders of courts / Judicial courts
caption_attribution_description: "Palácio da Justiça", main courthouse in Porto, Portugal.
context_page_description: The Judiciary of Portugal is a system of courts that together constitute one of the four organs of Sovereignty as defined by the Portuguese Constitution. The courts are independent from the other three Portuguese organs of Sovereignty.
  The Portuguese courts are divided by four independent orders, each of which corresponds to the separate Constitutional, Judicial, Administrative and Auditors jurisdictions.
  The public prosecution and the representation of the State before the courts is assured by an independent body of magistrates, known as Public Ministry.
  The Ministry of Justice is the Government department responsible for the administration of the Judiciary system.
context_section_description: The Judicial order (Ordem Judicial) is the first category of common courts (excluding the Constitutional Court), forming a proper hierarchical structure that has the Supreme Court of Justice (Supremo Tribunal de Justiça) in Lisbon as its superior body. This order also includes the five intermediate level courts called Relação (Guimarães, Oporto, Coimbra, Lisbon and Évora) and the judicial courts of first instance. The judicial courts of first instance can be courts of generic competence or courts of specific competence.
  For the purpose of the Judicial order, until 2014, Portugal was divided in 231 uneven comarcas, constituting the territorial areas of jurisdiction of the courts of first instance. With some adjustments carried away over the years, that division was essentiality the one established in the judiciary reform of 1835. Depending on the size of its population, each comarca could have from a single court of general jurisdiction with just a single judge to a complex structure of diverse courts of special jurisdiction (civil, criminal, criminal procedure, labour, family, etc.), each of which, by itself, could include several specialized sections and judgeships. The comarcas were grouped in 57 judicial circles (círculos judiciais) and these in four judicial districts (distritos judiciais).
  Following the judiciary organization reform of 2014, the country is now divided in 23 larger comarcas, all of them having, each one, a single judicial court of first instance, with general jurisdiction. Each judicial court is divided in judgeships (juízos), with the following types existing: central  civil, local civil, central criminal, local criminal, local minor crimes, criminal procedure, labor, family and juvenile, commercial, execution, general jurisdiction and proximity.
  The comarca courts are typically installed in monumental courthouses, called palácios da Justiça (palaces of Justice), many of them built between the 1940s and the 1960s. Before the reduction of the number of comarcas due to the 2014 reform, each palace of Justice was usually a seat of a court, but now most of them are only seats of judgeships of larger courts.
  Besides the 23 generic competence judicial courts of each comarca, there are also some subject-matter jurisdiction courts of first instance that have territorial jurisdiction over several comarcas. These include the penal supervisory courts of Porto, Coimbra, Lisbon and Évora, the Maritime Court at Lisbon, the Intellectual Property Court at Lisbon, the Concurrency, Regulation and Supervision Court at Santarém and the Central Criminal Procedure Court at Lisbon.
  The judges of the Supreme Court of Justice have the title of conselheiros (counselors), those of the Relações have the title of desembargadores and those of the courts of first instance have the title of juízes de direito (judges of law).
  As Justice of first instance, there are also the judges of peace and the arbitral tribunals. The judges of peace have competence to appreciate and to judge small actions regarding values that do not exceed the ceiling below which it is not possible to appeal from a court of first instance.
caption: The Palace of Justice of Oporto, seat of the Relação and of the Court of Justice of the Comarca of Oporto.
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