Structural case management as an appropriate judicial mechanism in possessory disputes

Abstract

The growing complexity of possessory disputes highlights the inadequacy of solutions based exclusively on legal subsumption, requiring judicial models capable of coordinating substantive law and procedural techniques. Against this background, this article analyses the operability of possessory law, understood as the coordination of substantive, normative, and procedural elements aimed at providing appropriate judicial protection in complex possessory disputes. To this end, it identifies the foundations underpinning this operability by examining 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 proceedings. Special Appeal No. 1,637,991/AL, reported by Justice Afrânio Vilela, was adopted as a case study using a descriptive legal approach and bibliographic and documentary research methods. It is concluded that the operability of possessory law does not derive from legislative amendments, although they reinforce it, but from the interaction between the substantive autonomy of possession, structural procedural techniques, and judicial action, enabling the development of appropriate judicial remedies in highly complex possessory disputes.