• Competition Opens: Monday, 28 October 2024

• Essay Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 31 January 2025 (please email your essay to eventos@tribconstitucional.pt) 

• Result Announcement: Monday, 31 March 2025

• Prize-giving Ceremony: Monday, 2 June 2025 (to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the first session of the Constituent Assembly).

1. Entry requirements

• Entry to the essay competition is open to students currently enrolled in postgraduate programmes (Masters or Doctoral) at Portuguese higher education institutions. 

• Candidates may submit essays in any of the following fields: law, constitutional theory, jurisprudence, political philosophy, political science, history of ideas or sociology of law.

• Entries may be co-authored (maximum of two co-authors).

• Submitted essays should be written in Portuguese or in English.

• All submissions should be in PDF format. Typeface: Times New Roman (12). Line-spacing: 1,5. 

• Each entry must include a cover page with the candidate’s full name and email address, the academic programme and academic institution in which they are enrolled, and the essay’s total number of words. 

• The candidate's name should NOT appear within the document itself.

• Each entry should include a title and an abstract of 300 words. 

• Essays should be between 4000 and 6000 words long (excluding endnotes and bibliography).

• Candidates should NOT add footnotes. They may, however, add endnotes and/or a bibliography.

• Citations and references must follow a recognised citation style (e.g. APA, Harvard, OSCOLA).

• Late submissions will not be accepted. 

• The evaluation panel reserves the right to decline to award any or all prizes in the event of a failure of entries to reach an appropriate standard. 

• The decision of the panel is final.

• Acceptance of entries depends on authors granting us permission to use their data for the purposes of receiving and processing their entry and communicating with them about the evaluation process. This permission extends both to public announcements about the competition and to publication of the essays. 

2. Originality:

• Submitted essays must be entirely original. All essays will be checked for plagiarism and the use of AI. Entries containing any plagiarised or AI generated content will be disqualified. Our determinations in all such matters are final. 

3. Assessment process: 

a) Receipt of entries will be recorded and acknowledged by the coordination team.

b) Each entry will be checked for plagiarism and the use of AI.

c) Original entries will be distributed to the Panel for assessment. 

d) Essays will be judged on:

- Knowledge and understanding of the relevant material

- Competent use of sources and evidence

- Quality of argumentation

- Originality of ideas

- Structure

- Writing style

- Persuasive force

- Presentation

4. Prizes

• The best essays will be published in Revista Portuguesa de Direito Constitucional (Portuguese Constitutional Law Review). 

• The top three essays will be awarded an Almedina book token. 

• A special prize-giving ceremony will take place at the Constitutional Court. 

• José Manuel Cardoso da Costa, President of the Portuguese Constitutional Court between 1989 and 2003 🔗

• Maria Inácia Rezola, Executive Commissioner for the Commemorations of the 50th anniversary of 25 April  🔗

• Vitalino Canas, Senior legal counsel and academic🔗