Os Aspectos e Comparações da Revelia e Contumácia no Processo Civil

The judicial process, as a method used by the State to apply the Law in the concrete case, is developed through an orderly series of acts performed by the parts and of State, which aim to resolve the existing conflict of interests. Once dully notified, the defendant can, according to his convenience, recognize the other part’s request, resist the other part’s request, or simply refrain from attending the notification and deliberating about the matter. Such phenomenon, choosing not to participate in the process, can be named "revelia" or "contumacy", according to the part that is absent or the current that one wants to follow. However, to dissert about"revelia" or "contumacy" (as "revelia" was called in the Roman Law), one needs to make some considerations about the Roman civil process. Inthe beginning, one could not conceive the formation of the civil process without author and defendant coming to the presence of the magistrate. The author was authorized to constrain the defendant withforce, in order to obtain its presence. The process was eminently private. In the phase called legis actiones, the civil process began with the oral intimation made to the defendant, by the author himself, to appear before Court. In case he didn't obey such call, the defendant could be dragged by the author andtwo more witnesses (igitur in capito), even by his neck, if he showed resistance (obtorto glues). Afterthe legis actiones, there was theprocess per formulas, or "formulary period", where the summons or notification was still the author's duty, but without the violence conceived before, because the defendant’s resistance in attending the process was…