Structural case management as an appropriate judicial mechanism for resolving possessory conflicts

Abstract

The increasing complexity of possessory disputes highlights the insufficiency of solutions based exclusively on normative subsumption, requiring adjudicative models capable of integrating substantive law and procedural techniques. In this context, this article examines the operability of possessory law, understood as the articulation of substantive, normative, and procedural elements aimed at ensuring adequate judicial protection in complex possessory disputes. To this end, it identifies the foundations supporting such operability through the interface between the autonomy of possession, recent proposals to amend the Civil Code, the permanent possession of lands traditionally occupied by Indigenous peoples in conflict with the good-faith possession of non-Indigenous occupants, and the structural management of litigation. The study adopts a case study approach based on Special Appeal No. 1.637,991-AL, authored by Justice Afrânio Vilela, using a legal-descriptive method and bibliographic and documentary research techniques. It concludes that the operability of possessory law does not stem from legislative amendments, although such amendments reinforce it, but rather from the interaction between the substantive autonomy of possession, structural procedural techniques, and judicial action, thereby enabling the development of judicial remedies suited to highly complex possessory disputes.