Identity of and distinction between human rights and fundamental rights: study on the validity and efficacy of property and housing rights and the legal impossibility of balancing these fundamental rights

• Grant number: 13/15912-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2013
• End date: November 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Law - Theory of Law
• Principal Investigator: Josué Mastrodi Neto
• Grantee: Ester Gouvêa Martins
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Humanas e Sociais Aplicadas (CCHSA). Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas (PUC-CAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Historical conditions and actual relations of power have given legal protection to individual rights in a way much higher than the protection given to social rights. The very statement of social rights seems to depend upon the previous definition of individual rights. The right to housing, considered a human right and a fundamental right, it is not easily identified autonomously, instead, it is subordinated by the right to property. There are historical reasons for such subordination. However, there are as well reasons to consider the right to housing as an autonomous right. This research refers to the possibilities of stating, yet minimum, an autonomous legal content to the fundamental right to housing.