The Brazilian Constitutional State

Abstract

This chapter is dedicated to a presentation of the Brazilian constitutional state and its antecedents. The idea is to provide a background to the socio-constitutional reality into which the Internet penetrates and which will form the object of the analysis I propose. It starts with a brief explanation of Brazilian political history, focused on the construction of the conceptual and actual citizenship towards the ideal of reciprocal recognition. Some remarks on the political disputes that took place during the elaboration of the current Brazilian democratic constitution follow. I clarify how the concept of citizenship was normatively constructed in and around this constitution, and draw attention to the links between Habermas’s theory and the values embraced by Brazil via the Constitution. The concepts of formal and material constitution are briefly presented to base observations on the external tension between facts and norms, indicating how the Brazilian constitutional order fits into this tension. Finally, some recent cases in which the Brazilian Supreme Court – the Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) – played an important role for the advancement of mutual recognition are presented. The chapter ends with a brief section that links this fragmented reality to the analysis of the Internet’s penetration.