Administrative morality: between legal reasoning and Legal Theory

• Grant number: 17/19183-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2017
• End date: November 30, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Law - Public Law
• Principal Investigator: José Reinaldo de Lima Lopes
• Grantee: Felipe Augusto Gato Dutra
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Direito (FD). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The principle of administrative morality is an interesting topic of great relevance, especially after its constitutionalization in 1988. The theme of administrative morality is strongly approached by French and Brazilian doctrine. However, this approach is usually based exclusively on legal dogmatics and what is meant by the science of law, making a debate that could be much broader and deeper in something restricted and limited, by virtue of an isolation of this dogmatic one to the field of the legal philophy. Thus, themes such as the relation between law and morality, which are essential to think of an administrative morality, are seen as have already passed, establishing the dogma of the separation of law and morality without great efforts to seek a better understanding of hypotheses in which the law and moral can be understood as coincidente and thus expand our view of administrative morality. Moreover, the problem of setting this debate only in legal dogmatics lies in the fact that these studies are still only focused on a theory about the legal norm, while in the contemporary legal philosophy, there is already much discussion about so-called action theories, in which the focus is on how people behave from the norm, what legal reasoning behind these legal norms. Thus, the present research will use the works of Neil MacCormick, theorist who works with the question of legal and moral reasoning, so that one can bring this theory to the Brazilian legal system, in order to understand the normative content of the principle of administrative morality. (AU)