Sociologia do Direito e Teoria Geral do Direito
Core concepts
Durkheim: mechanical and organic solidarity, collective conscience and anomie; law as an index of solidarity (repressive versus restitutive). Weber: rationalisation, types of domination (traditional, charismatic, rational-legal), formal and material law, bureaucracy. Marx: infrastructure and superstructure, law as class instrument. Ehrlich: living law and pluralism. Luhmann: autopoiesis and the binary code lawful and unlawful. Bourdieu: legal field, habitus and symbolic violence. Access to justice: Cappelletti and Garth and the waves of reform.
General theory: norm (Kelsen and the ought; Hart and primary and secondary rules), validity, vigour and social efficacy, interpretation methods, antinomies and gaps.
Traps
Do not confuse social efficacy with validity. Luhmann is not Habermas: the first sees law as autopoietic, the second as communicative. Anomie means loss of shared norms, not absence of law.
Rule of thumb
When a quotation says law is the index of solidarity, answer Durkheim. Worked example: a community that resolves conflicts by local practices illustrates pluralism and living law.
Língua Portuguesa
Core concepts
The exam tests comprehension and interpretation (main idea, inference, purpose), cohesion (reference, substitution, connectives) and coherence. Know the textual types: narration, description, dissertation and injunction. Grammar: verbal and nominal agreement (with haver and existir, mais de um, percentages), regency, crase, pronoun placement (proclise, enclise, mesoclise), punctuation and pronoun use. Semantics: synonymy, antonymy, homonyms, paronyms and figures of speech. Official writing: clarity, concision, formality and impersonality.
Traps
The usual trap is crase before possessive pronouns (optional), before feminine plurals, and in expressions such as a partir, which takes no crase. Another is agreement with haver: haviam muitos is wrong; houve muitos is correct. A comma cannot separate subject and verb. Ambiguity often comes from relative pronouns and unclear anaphora.
Rule of thumb
Replace the feminine word with a masculine one: if ao appears, use a with the grave accent. Worked example: Refiro-me a aluna becomes Refiro-me ao aluno, confirming the crase.