Constitution of the United States of Brazil (1946)/Title 1/Chapter 1
Chapter I
Preliminary Provisions
Art. 1—The United States of Brazil maintain, under the representative system, the Federation and the Republic.
All power emanates from the people and shall be exercised in its name.
§1. The Union includes, in addition to the States, the Federal District and the Territories.
§2. The Federal District is the capital of the Union.
Art. 2—The States may merge with one another, subdivide, or partition in order to annex themselves to others or to form new States, by vote of the respective legislative assemblies, plebescite of the populations directly concerned and approval of the National Congress.
Art. 3—The Territories may, by special law, constitute themselves into States, subdivide into new Territories or restore themselves as part of the States from which they were separated.
Art. 4—Brazil shall resort to war only in case of non-applicability or failure of resort to arbitration or pacific means of solution of the conflict, regulated by any international security organization in which it may participate; and in no case shall it embark on a war of conquest, directly or indirectly, alone or in alliance with another State.
Art. 5—The Union shall have power:
I—to maintain relations with foreign States and to make treaties and conventions with them;
II—to declare war and make peace;
III—to decree, extend and suspend state of siege;
IV—to organize the armed forces, the security of the frontiers and the external defense;
V—to permit foreign forces to pass through national territory or, for reasons of war, to remain therein temporarily;
VI—to authorize the production and control the commerce of war material;
VII—to superintend, throughout the national territory, the services of maritime, air and frontier police;
VIII—to coin and issue money and establish banks of issue;
IX—to control the operations of establishments of credit, capitalization and of insurance;
X—to establish the national plan of transport;
XI—to maintain the postal service and the national air mail;
XII—to develop, directly or through authorization or concession, the services of telegraphs, radio communication, radio broadcasting, interstate and international telephones, air navigation, and railways connecting seaports and national frontiers or crossing the boundaries of a State;
XIII—to organize permanent defense against the effects of drought, rural endemic diseases and floods;
XIV—to grant amnesty;
XV—to legislate upon:
a)—civil, commercial, penal, processual, electoral, aeronautical and labor law;
b)—general norms of law with respect to finance; insurance and social security; defense and protection of health; and penitentiary system;
c)—production and consumption;
d)—policies and bases of national education;
e)—public registries and commercial boards;
f)—organization, instruction, justice and guaranties of the military police and general conditions of their utilization by the Federal Government in cases of mobilization or of war;
g)—expropriation;
h)—civil and military requisitions in time of war;
i)—system of ports and of coastwise navigation;
j)—interstate traffic;
k)—foreign and interstate commerce; institutions of credit, exchange and transfer of values abroad;
l)—subsoil wealth, mining, metallurgy, waters, electric energy, forests, hunting and fishing;
m)—monetary and standard measures systems, title and guarantee of metals;
n)—naturalization, entry, extradition and expulsion of foreigners;
o)—emigration and immigration;
p)—conditions of capacity for the exercise of the technical, scientific and liberal professions;
q)—use of the national symbols;
r)—incorporation of aborigines into the national community.
Art. 6—The federal power to legislate upon the matters of Art. 5, Number XV, letters b, c, d, f, h, j, l, o, and r does not exclude supplementary or complementary state legislation.
Art. 7—The Federal Government shall not intervene in the States except:
I—to maintain the national integrity;
II—to repel foreign invasion or that of one State in another;
III—to suppress civil war;
IV—to guarantee the free exercise of any of the state powers;
V—to insure the execution of judicial orders or decisions;
VI—to reorganize the finances of any State which, without reasons of force majeure, may suspend for more than two consecutive years services on its funded external debt;
VII—to assure the observance of the following principles:
a)—representative republican form;
b)—independence and harmony of powers;
c)—temporality of the elective functions, the duration of these latter being limited to that of the corresponding federal functions;
d)—prohibition of reelection of governors and mayors for the period immediately following;
e)—municipal autonomy;
f)—rendering of administrative accounts;
g)—guaranties of judicial power.
Art. 8.—Intervention shall be decreed by federal law in the cases of Numbers VI and VII of the preceding article.
Sole Paragraph—In the case of No. 7, the act alleged to be unconstitutional shall be submitted by the Attorney General of the Republic to examination by the Federal Supreme Court, and, if the latter so declares the intervention shall be decreed.
Art. 9—The President of the Republic shall have power to decree intervention in the cases of Numbers I to V of Article 7.
§ 1. Issuance of decree shall be dependent upon:
I—In the case of Number V, the requisition of the Federal Supreme Court; or if the order or decision should be of electoral justice, the requisition of the Electoral Supreme Court.
II—In the case of Number IV, the request of the Legislative Power or of the Executive, coacted or impeded, "or the requisition of the Federal Supreme Court if the coaction should be exercised against the Judicial Power.
§ 2. In the second case provided for by Article 7, Number II, the intervention shall be decreed only in the invading State.
Art. 10—In cases other than requisition of the Federal Supreme Court or the Electoral Supreme Court, the President of the Republic shall decree the intervention and shall submit it, without prejudice to its immediate execution to the approval of the National Congress, which if not in session, shall be convened extraordinarily for this purpose.
Art. 11—The law or decree of intervention shall fix: its scope, its duration and the conditions under which it is to be executed.
Art. 12—The President of the Republic shall have power to make the intervention effective and if necessary, to appoint the Interventor.
Art. 13—In the cases enumerated in Article 7, Number VII, and with observance of the provisions of Article 8, Sole Paragraph, the National Congress shall limit itself to suspend the execution of the act alleged to be unconstitutional, if this measure be sufficient for the reestablishment of normality in the State.
Art. 14—Upon cessation of the motives which may have determined the intervention, the state authorities removed in consequence thereof shall return to the exercise of their offices.
Art. 15—The Union shall have power to decree taxes upon:
I—importation of merchandise of foreign origin;
II—consumption of merchandise;
III—production, commerce, distribution and consumption, as well as importation and exportation of liquid or gaseous lubricants and fuels of whatever origin or nature, this regime being extended insofar as it may be applicable to the minerals of the country and to electric energy;
IV—income and profits of whatever nature;
V—transfer of funds abroad;
VI—the business of its own economy, acts and instruments regulated by federal law.
§ 1. Articles classified by law as the minimum indispensable to housing, clothing, nourishment and medical treatment of persons of limited economic capacity are exempt from consumption tax.
§ 2. The taxation dealt with in Item III shall have the form of a single tax, which shall fall upon each kind of product. Of the resulting revenue, 60%, as minimum, shall be delivered to the States, to the Federal District and to the municipalities in proportion to their area, population, consumption and production, according to the terms and for the purposes set forth in federal law.
§ 3. The Union may tax the income from obligations of the state or municipal public debt and the profits of agents of States and municipalities, but it cannot do so to an extent greater than fixed for its own obligations and for the profits of its own agents.
§ 4. The Union shall deliver to the municipalities, except those of the capitals, 10% of the total it may collect of the tax dealt with in Number IV, with distribution being made in equal parts and at least half of the amount applied in benefits of a rural nature.
§ 5. The juridical acts to which the Union, the States or the municipalities may be parties, or the instruments to which these acts may be reduced, or again, those included in the tax qualifications established by Arts. 19 and 29, do not come under the provisions of Item VI.
§ 6. In the imminence or in case of foreign war, it is lawful for the Union to decree extraordinary taxes, which shall not be distributed in the manner of Article 21, and shall be eliminated gradually, within five years, counted from the date of the signing of peace.
Art. 16—The Union shall, moreover, have power to decree the taxes provided for in Article 19 which are to be collected by the Territories.
Art. 17—The Union is forbidden to decree taxes which are not uniform throughout the national territory or which may result in distinction or preference for one port or another, to the detriment of another of any other State.
Art. 18—Every State shall govern itself by the Constitution and by the laws it may adopt, with observance of the principles established in this Constitution.
§ 1. To the States are reserved all powers which are not implicitly or explicitly forbidden to them by this Constitution.
§ 2. The States shall provide for the needs of their government and the administration thereof; but in case of public calamity, it being incumbent on the Union to lend them aid.
§ 3. By agreement with the Union, the States may charge federal officials with the execution of state laws and services or of acts and decisions of their authorities; and, reciprocally, the Union may, in matters of its jurisdiction, entrust analogous duties to state officials, providing the necessary expenses.
Art. 19—The States shall have power to decree taxes upon:
I—territorial property, except urban;
II—transfer of property by reason of death;
III—transfer of real property between the living and its incorporation into the capital of legal entities;
IV—sales and consignments effected by traders and producers, including industrialists, with exemption, however, of the first operation of the small producer, as defined by state law;
V—exportation of merchandise of its production abroad, up to the maximum of 5% ad valorem, any additional (taxes) being prohibited;
VI—acts regulated by state law, those of its judicial service and the business of its economy.
§ 1. The tax on territorial holdings shall not be incident upon farms having an area not exceeding twenty hectares when cultivated by the proprietor, alone or with his family, and who does not own any other property.
§ 2. The taxes upon the transfer of tangible property (II and III) belong to the state in whose territory these may be situated.
§ 3. The tax upon transfer by reason of death, of intangible property, including securities and credits, belongs to the State in whose territory the values of the inheritance may be liquidated or transferred to the heirs, even though the succession may have opened abroad.
§ 4. The States may not tax securities of the public debt issued by other juridical persons of national public right to an extent greater than that established for their own obligations.
§ 5. The tax on sales and consignments shall be uniform, without distinction as to origin or destination.
§ 6. In exceptional cases, the Federal Senate may authorize the increase for a fixed time of the tax upon exportation up to a maximum of 10% ad valorem.
Art. 20—When the state collection of taxes, except that of the export tax, shall exceed in any municipality other than that of the capital, the total of local revenues of whatever nature, the States shall return (to such municipality) annually, 30% of the excess collected.
Art. 21—The Union and the States may decree other taxes in addition to those attributed to them by this Constitution, but a federal tax shall exclude an identical state tax. The States shall make collection of such taxes, and, as this is effected, shall deliver 20% of the proceeds to the Union and 40% to the municipalities where the collection has been effected.
Art. 22—The financial administration, especially the execution of the budget, shall be supervised in the Union by the National Congress, with the aid of the Tribunal of Accounts, and in the States and municipalties according to the manner established in their Constitutions.
Sole Paragraph—In the preparation of the budget the provisions of Articles 73 to 75 shall be observed.
Art. 23—The States shall not intervene in the municipalities, except in order to regularize their finances, when:
a)—there shall occur lack of punctuality in the service of a loan guaranteed by the State;
b)—they fail to pay, for two consecutive years, their funded debt.
Art. 24—The State is permitted to create an organ for technical assistance to municipalities.
Art. 25—The administrative and judicial organization of the Federal District and of the Territories shall be governed by federal law with observance of the provisions of Article 124.
Art. 26—The Federal District shall be administered by a Mayor appointed by the President of the Republic, and a Chamber elected by the people, with legislative functions.
§ 1. The appointment shall be made after the Federal Senate has given its consent to the name proposed by the President of the Republic.
§ 2. The Mayor shall be dismissible at will.
§ 3. The Judges of the Tribunal of Justice shall receive compensation not inferior to the greatest remuneration of the magistrates of equal rank in the States.
§ 4. The same taxes attributed by this Constitution to the States and to the municipalities shall belong to the Federal District.
Art. 27—The Union, the States, the Federal District and the municipalities are forbidden to establish limitations upon traffic of whatever nature by means of interstate or intermunicipal taxes, except for the collection of tolls or of taxes destined exclusively for the repayment of expenses incurred for the construction and for the maintenance and improvement of roads.
Art. 28—The autonomy of municipalities shall be assured:
I—by the election of the Mayors and of the Aldermen of the Municipal Chamber;
II — by self-administration in all matters concerning its own interest and, especially:
a)—the determination and collection of taxes within its jurisdiction and the application of its income;
b)—the organization of their local public services.
§ 1. The Mayors of the capitals and those of the municipalities wherever there should be natural hydro-mineral resorts, when improved by the State or by the Union may be appointed by the Governors of the States or of the Territories.
§ 2. The Mayors of such municipalities as federal law, at the indication of the National Security Council, may declare as military bases or ports of exceptional importance for the external defense of the Country, shall be appointed by the Governors of the States or of the Territories.
Art. 29—In addition to the revenue which is attributed to them by virtue of Paragraphs 2 and 4 of Article 15 and of the taxes which in whole or in part may be transferred to them by the State, the following taxes shall belong exclusively to the municipalities:
I—urban land and buildings;
II—license;
III—industries and professions;
IV—public diversions;
V—acts of their economy or matters belonging to their particular sphere.
Art. 30—The Union, the States, the Federal District and the municipalities shall have power to collect:
I—tax on improvements when there shall be an increase in value of real property, as a consequence of public works;
II—taxes;
III—any other revenues which may arise out of the exercise of their attributes and of the utilization of their properties and services.
Sole Paragraph—The tax on improvements cannot be demanded in amount greater than the expense realized or the increase in value which may accrue to the real property benefited by the work.
Art. 31—The Union, the States, the Municipalities and the Federal District are forbidden:
I—to create distinctions between Brazilians or preferences favoring any States or municipalities as against any others;
II—to establish, subsidize or embarrass the exercise of religious sects;
III—to have relations of alliance or dependence with any sect or church, without prejudice to reciprocal collaboration in furtherance of the collective interest;
IV—to refuse to honor public documents;
V—to levy tax upon:
a)—Property, revenues and services of one another, without prejudice, however, to the taxation of public services granted under concession with observance of the provisions of the sole paragraph of this article;
b)—temples of any sect, property and services of political parties, educational institutions, and social welfare (institutions), provided that their income is applied entirely within the country for the proper purposes;
c)—paper destined exclusively for the printing of newspapers, periodicals and books.
Sole Paragraph—Public services granted under concession do not enjoy tax exemption, except when so determined by the competent power or when the Union may institute such exemption in a special law, with respect to its own services, having in view the common interest.
Art. 32The States, the Federal District, and the municipalities may not establish any tax differential between properties of any nature by reason of their origin.
Art. 33—The States and the municipalities are prohibited to contract external loans without previous authorization of the Federal Senate.
Art. 34—Included in the property of the Union are:
I—lakes and water courses in territory of its domain or which border on more than one State, serve as boundaries with other countries or extend to foreign territory; as well as river and lake islands in the boundary zones with other countries.
II—the portion of ceded land which may be indispensable for the defense of frontiers, fortifications, military construction, and railways.
Art. 35—Among the properties of the state domain are included lakes and rivers in territory of the same (State) domain and those which have their source and mouth within the frontiers of the State.
Art. 36—The powers of the Union are Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial independent and harmonious among themselves.
§ 1. The citizen invested with the function of one of these shall not exercise the function of another, except for the exceptions set forth in this Constitution.
§ 2. It is forbidden for any of the Powers to delegate their attributes.