A dignidade da pessoa humana e a jurisprudência do Supremo Tribunal Federal: uma abordagem crítica à luz da teoria do direito como integridade de Ronald Dworkin

Abstract

The concept of human dignity refers to a valuable and an indispensable content for the interpretation and structuring of legal reasoning. Nevertheless, there is a general disagreement about the meaning of this concept. Treated by the legal community in an extremely broad and abstract language, the term has been shown from different approaches about its object and extension. Often, legal practitioners have used the concept, especially in hard cases, from metric criteria and as a defense evidence to erase or to an arbitrary restriction of rights, serving to the most various purposes in the legal sphere. On this scenario, depending on the way we understand the law divergence, the nature of the dignity´s concept and the way of interpretation, there will be different consequences for the exercise of judicial functions and to the realization of rights. Thus, by being reduced, or perhaps zero, the amount of studies that question the nature of the divergence in the treatment of human dignity, as well as discuss the moral content of this concept in a broad and integrated perspective, this research is justified for the relevance to understand the normativity of human dignity and to propose a legal reconstruction of the concept, so that its interpretation and application are kept intact and consistent within the Brazilian legal scenario. In these terms and taking the reference of the theory of law as integrity by Ronald Dworkin, the discussion that guides the development of this research is conducted to recognize if the opposing arguments of each legal approach on the notion of dignity would be located on the grounds and the content of this concept, inserting the theoretical mode of divergence. Thus, also questions the interpretive nature of the concept, its role as an interpretive guide and conciliator of moral judgments and, facing the critical analysis of some decisions of the Supreme Court, the judicial approach of the concept of human dignity.