The interpretative and integrative role of international human rights treaties in relation to the federal constitution.

Abstract

The 1988 Federal Constitution mandates, initially and subsequently, through paragraphs 2 and 3 of its Article 5, that principles and rules present in other documents play an important and decisive role in integrating, tacitly modifying, and guiding interpretations of the constitutional text, as well as in the concrete application of fundamental rights present in the inaugural document of the Brazilian Legal System. Understanding this order of the constitutional text means understanding the necessary interpretative mechanisms that open the Brazilian legal system to the construction of a protective network that aims to be global and perfect, and which, through legal technique, enshrines the position of the holder of Brazilian political power: the people. This political integration is still progressing slowly, having objectively produced only a single document, but it could enforce principle-based norms to influence interpretations and concretizations of new or stronger rights where the ordinary legislator has not acted to amend the constitutional text itself or, at least, to guarantee it infra-constitutionally. The Brazilian legal system does not shy away from new international thoughts, rights, and norms when this integration is foreseen, encouraged, and ordered by the system itself, much less when the value principles are already established in the Federal Constitution of October 5, 1988. While there is no lack of legal possibility, perhaps we cannot say the same about the legislative and judicial interest, sensitivity, and perspicacity when dealing with and researching international documents that further enrich the dry constitutional text.