"Justiça Fiscal", JL Saldanha Sanches

Constitucionalizar um princípio é a forma contemporânea de tentar sacralizar e eternizar um valor considerado imperecível. Claro que já não é possível, e está longe dos diagramas de força que regem as sociedades actuais, a possibilidade de produzir uma nova versão dos Dez Mandamentos bíblicos, mesmo para fins a que hoje chamaríamos estritamente laicos. Não quer isto dizer que uma Constituição, tal como sucede com as nossas, não deva ter uma durabilidade mínima, pois a flexibilidade patológica constitui um forte elemento de deslegitimação.

A defesa dos direitos fundamentais, se for feita por meio de regras sujeitas a permanentes alterações, equivale a uma espécie de baluarte móvel, ou seja, uma contradição dos seus termos na defesa das garantias do sujeito passivo no Estado constitucional. A alteração essencial, feita por meio da ruptura com um anterior texto normativo, deverá caber ao trabalho do juiz ou, em termos mais amplos, da jurisprudência. Não temos valores jurídicos eternos e imutáveis e não podemos conceber princípios para todo o sempre, mas a mudança e construção de novas interpretações num texto constitucional são uma tarefa a realizar de forma comunitária pelos juristas e cidadãos, maxime pelos tribunais. (pg. 29)

As leis fiscais estão sempre sujeitas a um processo de discussão pública, uma vez que devem ser aprovadas pelo Parlamento, podendo a opinião pública facilmente reagir a movimentos perceptíveis de maior oneração fiscal quando o executivo se vê obrigado a aumentar impostos. 

No entanto, para além destas grandes decisões perceptíveis (por exemplo, quando a taxa do IVA aumenta 2 pp) a lei fiscal está sempre cheia de um conjunto de pequenas excepções, de regimes especiais, de benefícios fiscais que, ainda que no seu cômputo final alterem profundamente a distribuição da carga tributária, escapam quase sempre à percepção da grande maioria dos contribuintes. São excepções que estilhaçam a lógica interna do sistema e os princípios de oneração, são um conjunto de «contranormas» que o contribuinte normal percebe mal, mas que lhe transmitem a noção (exacta) de que as leis fiscais são injustas.

Estas sistemáticas criações de nichos de privilégio mediante a acção de lobistas foram minuciosamente estudadas nos EUA onde a enorme complexidade do tax code tem sido explicada por uma intensíssima e permanente interacção entre legisladores e interesses particulares. (pg.43)

Os benefícios fiscais [isenções] são uma excepção à regra da tributação [...] A desigualdade de tratamento entre factos semelhantes com alguns excluídos de tributação exige uma justificação, sob pena de um regresso aos privilégios fiscais. Tal justificação pode ser de ordem económica ou social. [...] Em todos estes casos poderemos encontrar razões para a atribuição de um regime fiscal mais favorável, mas a multiplicações destas razões -- e a consequente multiplicação de benefícios fiscais (que depois de serem concedidos tendem a perpetuar-se independentemente de um juízo renovado sobre a sua real eficácia) -- é um dos problemas principais dos sistemas fiscais de hoje.

Numa lógica liberal que se opõe à intervenção do Estado na economia, a atribuição de benefícios fiscais não deverá existir, ou, pelo menos, deverá ser desempenhada por subsídios. Em relação às consequências financeiras, o custo do subsídio é o mesmo que a receita perdida em virtude do benefício fiscal, com a vantagem de ser mais transparente e de a sua atribuição dever ser decidida todos os anos, orçamento após orçamento. (pg.49)

Os impostos sobre os combustíveis são a negação de tudo aquilo que aprendemos sobre a justiça fiscal: aumentando o preço da gasolina ou do gasóleo atingem-se principalmente os contribuintes com menor capacidade contributiva, cidadãos estes que podem ser obrigados a mudar de comportamento -- abandonar o uso do automóvel -- quando o imposto se junta ao aumento do preço do produto-base. E, no entanto, tudo visto e ponderado, estes impostos são justos. Mas justos em que sentido? 

Ao internalizar as externalidades negativas ligadas ao uso dos combustíveis fósseis, o imposto sobre os combustíveis amplifica um sinal que o mercado transmite de forma insuficiente: a necessidade de poupar energia por, nesta área, as flutuações do preço não conduzirem a uma situação de equilíbrio. Não conduzem, porque, a curto e médio prazo, os combustíveis fósseis são o método mais económico de produzir energia. Mas apenas a curto e médio prazo, e porque não se contabilizam os custos ambientais. [...] a inacção do Estado, com a ausência de políticas públicas sobre energias alternativas e a manutenção do petróleo para consumo interno a preços agradavelmente baixos, ainda que socialmente pareça justa, tem efeitos geopolíticos inaceitáveis [...] os argumentos ligados à eficiência económica e social desta tributação são tão fortes que se tornam um argumento de justiça. (pgs 69-71)

Limitações da Lei (parte III)

[W]hile unjust laws and changes in law may be legal or valid by virtue of both acceptance and preexisting rules of change, legitimacy may be lost or diminished by an unjust change of law that lessens the people's ability to change the law in the future. In this sense the people's acceptance is a source of authority with continuing omnipotence both descriptively and normatively. Descriptively, the people and the laws are powerless to limit irrevocably the power of acceptance to validate law. Normatively, an unjust legal impediment to the people's continuing power to change law weakens the legitimacy of the system of law to that extent. [pg.105]

[...]

Frederic Coudert argues that the danger of an unwritten constitution is abuse of power by an ineffectively limited government, that the dangers of a written constitution are rigidity and violence triggered by slow and difficult change, and that our system of judicial amendment allows us to escape both dangers. C.P. Patterson believes the power of judicial amendment does not provide the best of both worlds, as Coudert argued, but gives the Supreme Court "the same relation to our Constitution that the English Parliament has to the English Constitution. [pg.200]

[...]

One might argue that actual legal systems depend on, or inevitably embrace, at least a few principles of "natural law" or morality, and that the latter are absolutely immutable. For example, one might argue that not even revolution can change the rule that the people have a right to revolt, that promises should be kept, that self-defense excuses homicide, and so on. [nt.1, sec.8]

Peter Suber - The Paradox of Self-Amendment (1990)

Limitações da Lei (parte II)

I am intrigued by the idea that the manifestation of consent sufficient to adopt a constitution in the first place is the most that can be expected in order to provide continuing authority to that constitution. This means that if amendment is more difficult than the original ratification, then the constitution has lost some degree of authority or legitimacy. The authority of a constitution over generations of citizens who did not ratify it would diminish roughly to the extent that the difficulty they face in amendment exceeds the difficulty of the original ratification. For such citizens, legitimate amendment would be more difficult than a revolution or discontinuity that would establish a new constitution with equal or greater legitimacy than their ancestors had in adopting the old one. If amendment becomes impossible after the first generation, because there is no AC or because courts or tyrants invalidate all attempts under it, then authority under the consent theory would drop to about zero plus any surcharge which citizens accord to rules of law, qua rules of law, before deciding to disobey.

[...]

One of the most important distinctions relating to the paradox of self-amendment and the paradox of omnipotence is borrowed from Hart's discussion of the omnipotent sovereign. An omnipotent parliament, he says, may limit its power to make law, without paradox, if its omnipotence is "self-embracing", and may not do so, at least without paradox, if its omnipotence is "continuing". Self-embracing omnipotence is unlimited power to make law, including power to affect that power. It may be used against itself and lost or limited irremediably. Continuing omnipotence is unlimited power to make law, but not including power to limit that power, thereby insuring that the omnipotence of the entity continues. Self-embracing omnipotence is unlimited but limitable power; continuing omnipotence is limited only to insure that it is (otherwise) illimitable. Self-embracing omnipotence is the power to make law on every subject, and therefore includes laws that diminish this power irremediably, whereas continuing omnipotence is the power to make law at every moment, and therefore excludes laws inconsistent with this very continuity.

[...]

Beings of continuing omnipotence are doomed to life, power, and even doomed to freedom, while beings of self-embracing omnipotence are free to resign, abdicate, and self-destruct. Pliny the Elder said mortals were freer than the gods because mortals could commit suicide. He obviously thought that divine freedom was continuing, and that continuing freedom was inferior to self-embracing freedom. [...] When John Stuart Mill said, "[i]t is not freedom to be allowed to alienate [one's] freedom," he was defining freedom to be a continuing power, and his disagreement with those who would permit people to sell themselves into slavery, become drug addicts, or otherwise freely choose unfreedom, is not so much on the desirability of these acts as on the logic of self-application.

The distinction is very useful, and by extension we may speak of self-embracing and continuing powers to amend. Self-embracing amendment power may amend, limit, or repeal itself, irremediably, while continuing amendment power may not apply to itself, at least to diminish itself irrevocably.

Continuing omnipotence and amendment power are not maximally omnipotent, for there is one family of things they cannot do, namely, limit themselves, violate their immutable limitation and continuity, bind themselves for the future, and so on. But this should not lead us to think that continuing omnipotence and amendment power can augment themselves. For the only way to do that is (1) to repeal their limitation and become self-embracing, or (2) to become capable of repealing their limitation, which is already to be self-embracing. But these would contradict their continuing character and are impermissible for them. That is why this is the paradox of self-amendment, not merely the paradox of self-limitation. Because continuing omnipotence and amendment power can only affect themselves in ways that neither limit nor augment themselves irrevocably, they are restricted to relatively trivial acts of self-amendment. For example, an AC of continuing omnipotence could rearrange and renumber the articles of the constitution, including itself, without affecting the extent of its power.

While continuing omnipotence cannot become self-embracing, the converse is not true. Self-embracing omnipotence can become continuing omnipotence and may even become "partipotence" or of merely finite power.

Peter Suber - The Paradox of Self-Amendment (1990)

Limitações da Lei (parte I)

Central to many theories of democracy is the view that law is legitimate only when endorsed by the consent of the governed. If this is not to be a hollow slogan, we must have some idea of where to look for the consent, or dissent, of the people to their form of government. One of the most important and indicative manifestations of consent is the people's willingness to use the mechanisms of legal change, especially the supreme power of constitutional amendment. Non-use of the power might reveal a certain contentment with the unamended constitution, and use of it might reveal a certain contentment with the established channels of change and the current form of the constitution. But clearly the inference from use and non-use of the amendment power to consent is only valid if certain conditions are met. For an onerous or unfair procedure could thwart amendment long after desire for change became widespread and intense. An amending procedure that was undemanding for a privileged class might result in frequent use that did not reflect the desires of the larger public. Hence, use and non-use of the amending power will not really indicate consent unless the procedure is fair and neither too difficult nor too easy. But to change the fairness and difficulty of the amending procedure are virtually the only reasons to amend the amendment clause. Hence, self-amendment will almost always affect our ability to assess the people's consent to be governed by their constitution and the people's power to alter legal conditions to meet their consent.

[...]

Our Lockean ears resonate with the proposition that the people are sovereign and that they are bound to obey their laws by contract principles. Yet the paradox of omnipotence arises in another form if the first generation of sovereign people can bind its successors. The adoption of a constitution with an amendment clause [AC] is a revocable act, because the AC permits piecemeal change and wholesale replacement. As long as the establishment of the constitution is revocable by later generations, and the method of amendment is fair, then the first generation is not oppressively binding its successors. But if the method of amendment is not fair, or is too difficult, then the constitution inherited by future generations does oppress and is partially illegitimate. The Lockean consent theory is strengthened as a normative theory of justice, and protected from the paradox of omnipotence, if we insist that the legitimacy of law requires the continuing consent of the governed, not just the consent of the founding generation. [nt.11,pg.379]

Peter Suber - The Paradox of Self-Amendment (1990)