PHD AND MASTER’S PROGRAM IN LAW AND JUSTICE
The PhD and Master’s Program in Law and Justice encompasses research on various branches of law, presenting a strongly interdisciplinary and critical character.
All faculty and student research is linked and must be developed within one of the 36 collective research projects, which are organized in 4 research lines.
The research lines express broader thematic axes and establish common investigative guidelines for the collective research projects. The latter connects research around a theoretical or thematic core.
This organization aims to foster collaborations and discussions among students and faculty who conduct research on related subjects.
THE 4 RESEARCH LINES
Research Line 1
Power, Citizenship and Development in the Democratic Rule of Law
This line is dedicated to the study of the legal, ethical, political, economic, and social foundations of power and authority, both in the public and private spheres, at national and international levels. It encompasses themes such as democracy and its institutions, distributive justice and taxation, limits of criminalization and punitive intervention, contemporary trends in Administrative Law and International Economic Law, the role of the State, the market, civil society, businesses, and international organizations, including from the perspective of sustainability, in addition to the scientific and multidisciplinary analysis of technological innovation.
Research Line 2
Human Rights and the Democratic Rule of Law: Foundation, Participation and Effectiveness
This line examines discourses, including their ideological nuances, and the challenges related to the effectiveness of human rights within the Democratic Rule of Law, across all institutional contexts in which they manifest – legislation, administration, judicial protection, mediation, negotiation processes, among others. It emphasizes social participation in the foundation and processes of effectuating these rights, considering the conflictual dimensions experienced by individuals, groups, and actors in the multiple interrelated spheres that are constructed within cities.
Research Line 3
History, Power and Freedom
This line articulates the interfaces between legal and humanistic knowledge, repositioning debates on the historical and political foundations of Law and its developments, in light of new, strongly interdisciplinary frameworks. It proposes to reclaim History as a space for reflection on the human person, Law, and the State, as well as on the transformation of territories, seeking to recover the constitutive tension between personhood and citizenship, history and reason, recognition and labor, identity and collectivity, tradition and critique.
Research Line 4
State, Reason and History
This line investigates the State in its multiple dimensions (political, legal, philosophical, historical, cultural, social, and strategic), fostering readings that establish a critical dialogue with traditions of thought. It proposes a historical, systematic, and critical reflection on justice and the political, deepening, in the dialectical division between rationality and historicity, the tension between power and freedom. It accommodates interdisciplinary approaches to Law and the State, recovering, at national and international levels, the dialectic between critical-legal and political-philosophical perspectives, defense and security, legal history, and comparative law.
For information about the faculty members associated with each research line, please consult the “Collective Projects” section on the program’s website.