Constitutional imagination: human rights, culture and development in Luhmann and Unger

• Grant number: 15/24200-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate (Direct)
• Start date: January 25, 2016
• End date: July 04, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Law - Theory of Law
• Principal Investigator: Celso Fernandes Campilongo
• Grantee: Lucas Fucci Amato
• Supervisor: Samuel M. Moyn
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Direito (FD). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Harvard University, Cambridge, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/02114-6 - Constitutional imagination: human rights, culture and development in Luhmann and Unger, BP.DD

Abstract

This project refers to a scholarship for a fellowship as a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School and is part of the direct doctorate scholarship granted by Fapesp (the doctorate program is developed at the University of São Paulo Law School). I propose two starting points to shape my research activities abroad. Firstly, I would focus on the comparative history of human rights and constitutional law. There is an emerging literature in the United States that is changing paradigms on the ways we describe rights both in international law and in domestic traditions. To survey this literature and then compare it to my closer contexts (Latin America, especially Brazil) is the first task. Secondly, my interest is directed to the institutional design of rights. When rights are seen as institutions that can be modeled in contrasting directions, we face the problem of procedures and organizations for enforcing the law. Some research on comparative constitutional law and on human rigths law may provide useful material for this second task. (AU)