CRIMINAL CLAUSE AND DUAL FUNCTION THEORY: OVERCOMING IN PERSPECTIVE IN BRAZILIAN DOCTRINE .
Penalty clause. Unitary theory or dual function theory. Overcoming the penalty clause.
Penalty clauses have been the subject of relatively few academic studies, especially when dealing with a change in focus, which also implies a change in application or, in other words, implies abandoning the status quo in order to promote changes in accepted practices. This definitely leads to legal and cultural change. In Germany, for example, a review of penalty clauses began in the 1970s, but changes were only incorporated in 2002. In this sense, the goal of this dissertation is to verify the progress of Brazilian legal studies from a comparative perspective, in terms of resolving or overcoming the penalty clause. This is done from the viewpoint of the unitary theory or the dual function theory. To this end, we developed a theoretical characterization of the penalty clause, its modalities and functions, later presenting vulnerable points of this theory based on which solutions were described by Brazilian scholars. The study concludes that, despite cultural solutions taking time, progress is slow in Brazil.