Applicability of Law No. 6495/2020 in civil and commercial jurisdictions

Abstract

The Civil Procedure Code regulates evidentiary hearings in the civil jurisdiction in person; as a technological innovation, Law No. 6495/2020, which implements the telematic media system in the Judiciary, allows these hearings to be conducted virtually in certain exceptional cases. This raises the research question: Can Law No. 6495/2020 be validly applied to evidentiary hearings in the civil courts? In order to answer this question, a non-experimental qualitative approach methodology will be followed, combining laboratory and field work. As a result, it is confirmed that this regulation is applicable for evidentiary hearings in civil courts, but its use must be analyzed case by case to determine whether or not it collides with the normative essence provided for in the Civil Procedure Code. The advantages found are: speeding up the judicial process; greater access to justice for people living in remote areas. On the other hand, the lack of adequate infrastructure is cited as a disadvantage. It is concluded that Law No. 6495/2020 is a useful tool to expedite the judicial process and facilitate access to justice, but its use must be carefully weighed to avoid any type of fraud derived from the behavior of the litigants.