Natureza Jurídica das Cooperativas

Abstract

In order to understand the reason why the cooperative societies have the same legal nature as the civil associations, it was carried out a survey about their genesis, their social framework and social capital and about the special characteristics of this legal entity. At the same time, it was studied the cooperative society law, its species and classification, but also its society importance, focusing the benefits and the grounds of the discussion about its legal nature. In this way, it was considered that there is not a brand new subtype in the classification of this legal institute, because it is assumed that the application of the Brazilian Civil Code (article 1096), which states that the rules of civil associations must be used in cases of legal gaps about cooperative societies, should only be applied in this specific situation, since this is a sui generis society different from the others. In addition, both legal literature and brazilian jurisprudence, strictly, that this entity is a civil association, which has its own legal nature, since it doesn’t exert corporate activity and, even more, has its special characteristics that cause a distinction between the others and must be observed – an example is the article 982 of the Brazilian Civil Code. Therefore, it is not possible consider the cooperative societies as a new kind of civil association, otherwise we would adopt an unconstitutional posture and against the law.