The brazilian “second bill of rights”: a cause for celebration?

• Autor(a) principal: Ferraz,Octavio Luiz Motta
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2183-184X2014000300007
• topic: Brazilian Constitution of 1988; social and economic rights; constitutional effectiveness; sham constitutions; Economic and Social Rights Fulfillment Index (ESRF)

The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 established an extensive catalogue of fundamental rights and set, as the fundamental principles and objectives of the new Brazilian republic, citizenship, the dignity of the human being, and the construction of a free, just and solidary society, in which poverty should be eradicated and inequalities reduced, and everyone's well-being should be promoted without any discrimination. But how wide is the gap still between the social and economic citizenship promises of the Citizen's Constitution and the real life of the Brazilian population? Despite significant problems of quality, efficiency and underfunding, the imperfect quantitative data indicates that the public services and benefits system in Brazil, a great part of which created by the Constitution, has improved, often significantly, the well-being of the Brazilian population in the past couple of decades.