Presentation

Given the millions of Brazilian laws under the Constitution, in which the nation has always aspired to anti-Weberianism to get rid of the state monopoly, an attempt not achieved by order of those in power. In a country where law practitioners are rife, the attention of quantitative and qualitative studies in the area of ​​legislative law is not challenged. Not even an assessment of the legislative quality, even at the federal level, because when compared to other spheres, it borders on the universe of more than 14 million legal norms. At the federal level, there are more than 180 thousand.

This reflection seeks to establish a new area of ​​application of quantitative and qualitative methods to lawmaking. We don’t intent to exhaust the innovation related to legistic and legimatic, a binomial that shows its colour in the legislative arenas, I present the innovation of legismetric, in the context of dealing with the fundamentals of legislative proposals and legal norms, from the problems of its elaboration until the judicial litigation.

The structure of legistics develops the concept to understand the message of the law (including articulation and thematic field), of legislation to systematise and compile the categorisation of the law, and at once with legismetric as a specific algebra in the identification and treatment of textual structures in the articles in each legislative proposal that make up the laws that incite the challenge by the challenger.

Panoramic view in the binomial legistic x legimatic

Dealing with legistics means giving grounds for the elaboration of the proposition, in which the legislative idea is evidenced with a specialised language that, coupled with an algebraic account, reveals the structure of the legislative objects, that is, their internal division into articulated texts. In this case, when the type of proposition or legal norm is presented in capital letters – (PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION, which can only be transformed into a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT) – it results in its indicative in a reduced version in analytical terms, that is, it identifies the type of legal diploma. Of course, its individuality must be taken into account, which is not always irrefutable, as occasionally the same title may coincide or in another legal diploma. As presented, the draft of the legislative is diluted in lowercase. It may lose some of its specificity, but it gains in articulations, by bringing together similar themes in homogeneous groups in terms of form and structure.

The work of developers within the scope of the Interlegis program, of the Federal Senate of Brazil, in 2005, the SAPL tool – Support System for the Legislative Process – was created, in a collaborative environment in the open-sourcing concept to provide transparency of the actions of the local MPs to citizens. Product of an exceptional scientific development, distributed free of charge for use in City Councils, which, through legimatic, ended up trampling over classical methods and procedures that had been applied, without the aid of electronic means, causing inconvenience and hours of research on legal norms by citizens , like manual protocols and annotations in old books. 

In several versions that accommodate indexing, legislative production and records by reports, for the comfort of scholars in the legislative area and effective social control, the SAPL informs what the legislative proposals are and the link with its result, something unknown to many legislators of Brazilian subnational houses.

The legistics x Legimatics x legismetric trilogy

In its innate conception, legislative information technology (legimatic) is dedicated to putting in general order, by a natural demand of its users, the organisation (ordering, meeting, comparison, classification, retrieval, indexing and compilation) of legislative documents and norms, fed by the SAPL operators and other proprietary tools, that allies to the legistics in the binomial that needs the incorporation of legismetric.

Given the possibility of implementing and diversifying the use of legislative informatics, the author identified a specialised research area, called legismetric, in order to raise the discussion of the interactive part of the scientific field, demanding qualifications from the actors who analyse the legislative process. With all due respect, both legismetric and legistics can bring to light part of the knowledge universe of the legislative process and legislative drafting.

The method of researchers for the function of quantifying legislative documents follows practically the same course, according to structure and form. In this sense, the full application of the concept is applicable to the Constitutions, and it extends to other legal norms, such as ordinary laws, complementary laws, legislative decrees and resolutions, as well as other extensive and complex legal instruments in their legislative structure.

As we conceive of an infinite diversity of forms and structures of extensive and complex laws, it is sometimes recommended to restrict the application of legislation to each federated entity. It is inadvisable to use the method for comparisons between different municipalities, due to their natural peculiarities, of local interest, for example. Allied to this, the history of the various legal diplomas of the same type, and in each legislature, should not be forgotten.

Hence, it does not make sense to give qualification of a certain conceptual item in each case, both for the legistics and for the legimatics, as it brings different considerations by the legislators, therefore, it is possible to generate legismetric concepts in a vacuum, even if the legislative culture of a certain federated entity, because some of that advance in legislation, while others remain in legislative inertia.

Thus, the conceptual basis has undeniable historical backing, despite the capillarity of search tools, in essence, complying with legislation. Even though it has an analytical function, the search method, whether using SAPL or another tool, fulfills its role well, but I draw attention to the potential perspective of its use for legislative production and quality control in the legislative process.

Conclusion

Given the likely novelty, supported by the result of empirical research, this essay has an exploratory nature, which allows us to say that the conclusions and suggestions are neither categorical nor final. 

In the field of possibilities, three factors stand out. The first, in the theoretical and methodological field, in which it is intended to take advantage of the conditions of generality, rigor and veracity. It could not exempt, then from placing a postulate by the existence of a historical-cultural pattern printed in the structure of the laws of the three spheres of power (Federal, State and Municipal), an identification for the permanent and the changeable in the Brazilian legal structure, a pattern of structural organisation of the laws, according to LC 95, of 1998.

Also, the intention was to transform legismetric into a real instrument of analysis and control of laws, revealing the real intention of the legislator with the SAPL tools or other legimatic means by representing the assessment of the legislator’s profile and speculation about an idea of ​​a new law .

I leave here items about the need for the Academy to take a stand before the 14 million Brazilian laws. Is it convenient to let the legislator dominate federated entities with bad, bribed and harmful laws? The application of search tools equips legistic and legismetric evaluators to allow monitoring before and after the law, by identifying patterns of permanence and change.

Recommended Bibliography

ALBERGARIA, Bruno. Histórias do Direito: evolução das leis, fatos e pensamentos. São Paulo: Atlas, 2011.

CAMPOS, José de Queiroz. Como elaborar a lei. Técnica de redação e linguagem. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Verbete, 1972. pp. 183-90. 

CLARET, Jacques. A ideia e a forma. Problemática e dinâmica da linguagem. Rio de Janeiro : Zahar, 1980. 110 pp. (Trad. de Nathanael Caixeiro). 

DIJK, Teun A. Van. Discurso e Poder. Judith Hoffnagel & Karina Falcone (org.) São Paulo: Contexto, 2012.

FENNO, Richard F. Jr. Home Style: house members in their districts. Addison-Weslwy Educational Publisher Inc. Rochester: USA, 2003.

GARCIA, Dinio de Santis. Introdução à informática Jurídica. São Paulo : Edusp, 1976. 221 pp. 

GAUCHET, Marcel. A democracia contra ela mesma. São Paulo: Radical Livros, 2009.

HAROCHE, Claudine. Faire dire, Vouloir dire. Trad. Eni Pulcineli Orlandi. Presses Universitaire de Lille: França, 1984.

KAPLAN, Abraham. A conduta na pesquisa. Metodologia para as ciências do comportamento. São Paulo: Edusp, 1999. 440 pp. 

MACHADO, Luís Fernando P. A Lei que ensina a fazer leis. Belo Horizonte: Edições Superiores, 2018.

MACHADO, Luís Fernando P. Noções elementares de legística. Belém: Fabel, 2016.

_________, Luís Fernando P., Morale, Claudio e Oliveira, Adalberto. Manual técnico para operadores do SAPL 2.5. SEEP; Senado Federal, 2015.