JurisComp

The aim of this research project was to develop and make available an online database of Portuguese competition law case law, encompassing both public enforcement and private enforcement, freely accessible to all interested parties.

The project was born from recognizing the difficulty in accessing national case law in this area, especially from the first instance, and the absence of a global repository that allows searches based on predefined criteria and keywords. To enhance its user-friendliness, a format was chosen that would resemble the one already familiar to Portuguese researchers and jurists who have used the www.dgsi.pt website.

The goal was to initiate the project with an initial set of court decisions, which would be continuously supplemented and updated. It currently contains more than 1,000 court rulings, all of which can be downloaded by users. The database will always be a work in progress, not only to keep pace with legal developments but also because it's intended that the court rulings already included will be gradually analyzed and provided with increasingly comprehensive summaries and descriptors, facilitating searches by topic.

To achieve this objective, a wiki approach was employed. This database can be expanded and improved by all its users with the intention of making it an increasingly useful working tool shared by the entire Portuguese competition law community (and beyond). Any user can propose additions and changes, which will be subject to approval by the database moderators. Premium user status can be granted, allowing additions and revisions to be immediately published in the database, followed by review by the database moderators.

It is hoped that the creation and availability of this database will facilitate a better understanding of the practice of competition law in Portugal as applied by the courts and encourage empirical academic studies, which are often overlooked due to the challenge of systematically accessing court decisions.

JurisComp: https://juriscomp.pt/pt-pt 

Research team:

• IR | Miguel Sousa Ferro 
   
• Team | Carolina Ramalho dos Santos e Joana Gama Gomes