His body of work is divided among short articles, monographs on specific themes and works of broad chronological periodisation. His scientific publications were ideologically influenced, as in his theorisation of corporatism (he was named the first chair of the discipline at the Lisbon School of Law), as well as his studies on municipalities in the field of administrative law and colonial issues, which he carried out as professor of colonial law, and his study of the Courts and Constitutions in the wider framework of his studies on political science and constitutional law.

Born and raised in a devout Catholic family of the Lisbon petty bourgeoisie (his father was a Customs officer), he completed his early studies at the Liceu Camões, and was admitted to University of Lisbon School of Law in 1922, at the age of 16. During this period of intellectual formation, he began to define lines of thinking and completed his first historical legal study: Um grande jurista português – Fr. Serafim Freitas (Offprint in Nação Portuguesa) (A Great Portuguese Jurist - Friar Serafim Freitas, 1925). The "overseas controversy" – the issue of colonisation – was constantly in the author's thoughts and publications. This was a period of intellectual formation, and the start of his political involvement dates from this time, influenced by Italian fascism and the Action Française as well as, from his Portuguese experience, Integralismo Lusitano. An activist on the Academic Board of the latter, he worked on the magazine Nação Portuguesa, where he was secretary, and on other publications such as A Época, A Voz, Ideia Nacional and Jornal do Comércio e das Colónias.

With the assistance of his friend and future organiser of Estado Novo corporatism, Pedro Teotónio Pereira, and Manuel Múrias, he founded the magazine Ordem Nova (1926), which characterised itself as "anti-modern, anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-bourgeois and anti-Bolshevik". This movement was essentially based on Integralismo Lusitano and the thinking of António Sardinha, who largely influenced Marcelo Caetano regarding the study of corporatism and the municipality. It should also be noted that his participation in this movement is indicative of his conception of the authoritarian state ("A ditadura", The Dictatorship in Ordem Nova, No. 3, 1926, p. 98).

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