Vol. 8 No. 2 (2019)

The return to topics already investigated in the past can offer surprising new results to the scholar. In this issue of ||civilistica.com, our authors return to topics of utmost relevance, thus bringing innovative developments, necessary to the present moment. In the contractual field, Eduardo Nunes de Souza resumes the discussion about the cause of the contract; as for inheritance law, Marcos Catalan takes up, in co-authorship with André Arnt Ramos, a relevant critical reflection on the Brazilian model; at the same time, Claudia Lima Marques and Fernanda Nunes Barbosa undertake a new incursion into consumer law to investigate the extent to which it promotes effective protection for the elderly. Alongside those studies, we would like to offer the reader a series of reflections on the exercise of private autonomy in existential matters: be it in the extrajudicialization of the recognition of social paternity (Danilo Henrique Nunes, Lucas de Souza Lehfeld and Fernanda Morato da Silva Pereira), in the clash between autonomy and fundamental rights (Ricardo Alves de Lima and Henrique Cassalho Guimarães), in the arbitrability of matters regulated in prenuptial agreements (Fabiano Hartmann Peixoto and Vívian Salomão Ianelli), in the autonomy for the construction of the so-called recomposed families (Nadinne Sales Callou Esmeraldo Paes) or, still, in the serious dilemmas involving euthanasia and autonomy within the limits of human life (Igor de Lucena Mascarenhas). Among our Translations, we have the honor of publishing a key text by Cass Sunstein. And, back to the patrimonial law, we end our issue with two relevant contributions to obligations law: a critique of the jurisprudential treatment of the prescription of claims of undue payments, developed by Rodrigo da Guia Silva, and a systematic reflection around the so-called inversion of penalty clauses in real estate acquisition contracts, by Vynicius Pereira Guimarães. We still offer our readers new bibliographic reviews and selected links and videos. We wish you all a good read!