The concept of "Exercise" in general legal theory.

Matheus Carvalho Vieira

1. Notions. Exercise, from the Latin exercere, means to put into action; to enforce; to practice; or to make use of something. In legal practice, its application is often synonymous with the terms "enforce a right" or "exercise privileges or powers." The term is also commonly used to express the fulfillment of a legal obligation or duty. Therefore, its concept is integrated with the notions of capacity to exercise and power to exercise, relating to rights and obligations.

Furthermore, exercising refers to the use and enjoyment of a right according to legal provisions and the utilization of advantages conferred by law upon an individual. The act of exercising or enjoying a subjective right may comply with or deviate from legal norms. Thus, the exercise carried out in accordance with legal and regulatory prescriptions is called regular exercise of rights, while what does not comply constitutes irregular or illegal exercise.

Illegal exercise of a right designates a person who is abusively performing an act to the detriment of others or in disregard of legal rules, sometimes indicating an abuse of right when it infringes upon another's right. From this conception arises the right to act. "This and exercising are so closely related that they are sometimes confused."

From this preliminary framework, it can be deduced that exercise has an extremely broad conception, and it is precisely this comprehensiveness that makes it so complex for jurists to understand the institution as an autonomous category, detached from the various subjective situations to which it is usually linked.

Exercise is referenced in diverse fields of law with multiple meanings. Whether referring to the exercise of rights, the exercise of legal faculties, the performance of duties, or the exercise of factual situations, the term is recurrent in national laws and jurisprudence. Taking the Brazilian Civil Code as an example, numerous provisions deal with exercise, such as the exercise of personality rights, parental authority, possession, property, usufruct, among many others.

In all cases, exercise appears as an ancillary figure, always accompanying institutions and legal situations that are the true protagonists of the legal hypothesis. The use of the term is made to refer to such varied situations that, in many cases, it may raise questions about whether it has its own meaning - independent of the situation it accompanies - or if, in fact, there are various meanings for the term depending on the specific case.

The fact is that, in doctrinal terms, little attention is devoted to the study of exercise as a category in itself. Perhaps due to the extensive use of the term to refer to a wide range of legal situations, analyzing exercise as an autonomous and independent legal category becomes a challenging task. Nevertheless, studying exercise - on its own - proves to be extremely useful for a proper understanding of various legal phenomena, especially in practical terms, as will be seen next.

The risks of trivializing the legal category of exercise, as well as its extensive use that makes it mean everything at once (and therefore nothing), make defining the content of the category and developing an appropriate methodology for its practical application extremely relevant.