Research Projects

Collective Research Projects 

Master’s and doctoral research within the Postgraduate Program in Law at UFMG (PPGD UFMG) is conducted exclusively within the framework of collective research projects. These collective projects bring together the research endeavors of faculty and students, fostering a cohesive environment based on shared theoretical interests.

Descriptions and participating faculty members of each collective research project are detailed below.

Collective research projects in the research line 1
Power, Citizenship and Development in the Democratic Rule of Law

Contemporary Criminal Law

This project focuses on criminal dogmatics within the Democratic Rule of Law, examining its structure, function, limits, and interactions. It encompasses the theory of criminal norms, the theory of legal-criminal interests and the material concept of crime, the theory of crime itself (including its elements, evolution, variations, and contemporary challenges), and the theory of criminal sanctions (addressing the purposes, limits, application, and execution of penalties, security measures, and extra-penal consequences of conviction). Furthermore, it investigates comparative criminal dogmatics, supranational criminal law, and the interplay between criminal dogmatics and other fields of knowledge, such as the influence of various branches of the legal system, criminology, and criminal policy. Finally, the project explores the Theory of the Special Part of Criminal Law, encompassing specific crimes and socioeconomic criminal law. Participating Faculty: Fernando Antonio Nogueira Galvão da Rocha (coordinator), Frederico Gomes de Almeida Horta, Luis Augusto Sanzo Brodt, Tulio Lima Vianna

Contemporary International Law

This project focuses on the identification and socio-legal-economic analysis of key intergovernmental organizations active in the international society, particularly the United Nations, World Trade Organization (WTO), European Union (EU), Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), and the Organization of American States (OAS). It aims to construct a general theory underpinning their legal systems, emphasizing objectives and areas of activity; primary and secondary law; dispute resolution mechanisms and implementation of their decisions; and representation and international responsibility. The role of their decisions and the International Criminal Court in the construction and implementation of Contemporary International Law is also examined. Participating Faculty: Jamile Bergamaschine Mata Diz, Roberto Luiz Silva (coordinator).

Theory and Practice of International Law, Organizations, and Courts

This project examines contemporary International Law in its connections with the domestic legal systems of States, seeking to deeply examine the practice of different subjects of the international community who actively interact in the formation, implementation, interpretation, and application of international norms. Simultaneously, it investigates different legal theories within the doctrinal field to address the international normative phenomenon, aiming to offer distinct theoretical instruments for appreciating the practice of States, International Organizations, and International Courts in relation to law. Among the main objectives of this project is the investigation of these practices which, associated with different theoretical approaches, offer answers to new legal problems involving sources, international responsibility, immunities, human rights, environmental and climate law, process and procedure, new technologies, and the rules of international armed conflicts and those relating to the use of force. Special attention is paid to the legal foreign policy of States in the formation and positions assumed in relation to these norms, in order to carry out a comparison both between practices and between theories and practice of International Law and Global Law. Participating Faculty: Aziz Tuffi Saliba (coordinator), Lucas Carlos Lima.

Administrative Law: Between Tradition and Contemporary Trends

This project focuses on the study of contemporary trends in Administrative Law and their comparison with the historical traditions of this legal branch, including from a comparative law perspective. Thematic axes include the foundations of administrative law within the paradigm of the Democratic Rule of Law; instruments of consensual administrative action and governance by contracts; hybridisms and mutations of legal regimes applicable to the administrative function; partnerships between the Public Administration and private initiatives; valorization of the administrative process; Administrative Law of information and new technologies; trends and perspectives of administrative organization and the public domain; expansion of regulatory administrative activity; transformations in the regimes of provision of public services; and reconfiguration of the control of the Public Administration. Participating Faculty: Cristiana Maria Fortini Pinto e Silva, Eurico Bitencourt Neto, Maria Tereza Fonseca Dias (coordinator), Florivaldo Dutra de Araújo (collaborator), Luciano de Araújo Ferraz (collaborator), Maria Coeli Simões Pires (collaborator).

Public Administration and Strategic Development

This project focuses on the study and development of legal instruments and tools for use by the public administration in promoting constitutional objectives, such as building a free, just, and solidary society; guaranteeing national development; and eradicating poverty and marginalization while reducing social and regional inequalities. It encompasses anti-corruption studies and strategic studies of the needs of the public administration in its various forms of interaction with citizens and the private sphere, aiming at contributions in the justification, conception, and design of legal instruments that promote development and inclusion and the evolutionary construction of fundamental rights. Participating Faculty: Cristiana Maria Fortini Pinto e Silva, Fabiano Teodoro de Rezende Lara, Marcelo Andrade Féres (coordinator).

National Financial System: Business, Regulation, and Criminal and Administrative-Sanctioning Repression

This project aims to understand the purposes of regulating the National Financial System (SFN), verifying, based on applicable constitutional dictates, the extent to which there is harmony between private and public legal institutes established to achieve the identified objectives. To carry out the proposed study, in compliance with the contours of the Declaration of Economic Freedom Rights, the following are examined: a) subjects that practice the collection, intermediation, and application of financial resources, as well as the custody of securities owned by third parties, such as financial institutions, payment institutions, investment funds, members of the securities distribution system, their assistants, and other agents; b) acts, legal transactions, including contracts, credit instruments governed by Exchange Law and those subject to the rules of the Brazilian Payment System, securities, and tokens used in the professional exercise of financial resource movement activities in the National and International Financial System; c) official paper, metallic, book-entry, electronic, and digital currencies, credits, and credit rights; d) state regulation and self-regulation of agents, objects used, and activities carried out in these systems. It also encompasses understanding the supervision and punishment activity carried out by regulators in relation to agents that act professionally in the SFN. In this context, particular attention is dedicated to the study of financial crime, as a branch of special relevance within the field of Economic Criminal Law. From the perspective of the guidelines that the model of the Democratic Rule of Law confers on Brazilian Criminal Law, with the adoption of the postulates of minimum and guaranteeing criminal law, as well as the method of comparative law, in order to establish a dialogue with the main foreign models, it is based on the examination of the legitimacy of criminal intervention in economic activity, to identify in the financial system the existence of authentic legal assets to be protected and, finally, it deals with specific crimes. Participating Faculty: Luis Augusto Sanzo Brodt, Rubia Carneiro Neves (coordinator), Leandro Novais e Silva (collaborator).

State Intervention in the Economic Order

This project examines the intervention of the State in the Economic Order, particularly in the areas of market regulation, competition, the environment, economic and social development, as well as normative actions that have a direct or indirect impact on the economic reality. The focus lies in studying these subjects from a constitutional perspective, considering the general principles of economic activity, and the constitutionally determined public policies for the construction of constitutional objectives. Participating Faculty: Fabiano Teodoro Lara (coordinator), Paulo Roberto Coimbra Silva.

Company in the Marketplace

This project aims to study the development of companies in the market within the Democratic Rule of Law, focusing on the examination of state and business interactions and strategies and the guarantees and freedoms of legal subjects. The project aims to develop studies of State institutions and their interfaces with business activity, legal instruments to promote the development of innovation, new technologies, credit mobilization and financing, as well as control and regulation mechanisms of business organizations and the handling of their economic crises. It also seeks the development of adequate theoretical tools for the study of these issues. Participating Faculty: Christian Sahb Batista Lopes, Marcelo Andrade Féres (coordinator), Natália Cristina Chaves, Eduardo Goulart Pimenta (collaborator).

Law, Technology, and Innovation: Scientific and Multidisciplinary Analysis of Technological Innovation

This project aims to analyze, in a systemic way, how technology has been influencing Law and innovation. It comprises research – preferably in a multidisciplinary perspective – that has as its object the study of the various issues involving Law and technology to understand its legal, economic, and social aspects, as well as to address solutions that are not only consistent with legally protected values but also feasible in practice. Thus, research initiatives that intend to participate in this collective project must demonstrate their connection with social issues and the needs of the business environment. Among the topics that can be addressed are: Big Data; Blockchain and Cryptoassets; Network Design, Internet Infrastructure, and Telecommunications; Right to be Forgotten on the Internet and Content De-indexing; Electronic Document and Electronic Commerce; Private Investment Instruments in Innovation; Public Investment Instruments in Innovation; Artificial Intelligence; Internet of Things (IoT); Legal Techs and the Future of the Legal Market; Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet and Internet Service Providers; Unwanted Electronic Messages – SPAM; Content Moderation and Regulation of Online Platforms; Privacy and Protection of Personal Data; Regulation of New Technologies.   Participating Faculty: Leonardo Netto Parentoni (coordinator), Marcelo de Oliveira Milagres, Natália Cristina Chaves, Eduardo Goulart Pimenta (collaborator).

Tax Justice and Legal Certainty

This project aims to study fiscal justice and taxation from the perspective of contemporary philosophical, political, and economic theories that deal with justice and equality for the examination of the tax system, considering tax competition in the domestic and international spheres and its effects on the construction of human rights, especially in developing countries. In light of such theories, the project aims to question the regressive or non-regressive effects of consumption taxes, characteristic of developing countries, in comparison to taxes on income and wealth. It also addresses the issues of proportionality, progressivity, universality, and generality, the concretization of human and social rights, the prohibition of retrogression, and the counter-principle of the reservation of the possible. It further explores the counterbalance of legal certainty and taxpayer guarantees as constitutional limitations to the power to tax. Participating Faculty: André Mendes Moreira, Onofre Alves Batista Júnior, Paulo Roberto Coimbra Silva, Valter de Souza Lobato, Misabel de Abreu Machado Derzi (coordinator).

Constitutional Law, Theory of the Constitution, and Constitutional Hermeneutics

The project seeks to analyze, in a critical and reflective way, within the scope of Constitutional Law and Constitutional Hermeneutics, the functional intersections between the Judiciary, Legislative, and Executive branches, with an emphasis on themes related to the Theory of the Constitution, Theory of Interpretation, and the Theory of Fundamental Rights. It aims to achieve: a reinterpretation of contemporary theories of Law and the Constitution, inspired by a philosophical and sociological approach, with a view to constructing a conception of legality adequate to the paradigm of the Democratic Rule of Law; a theory of human and fundamental rights and a theory of legal interpretation compatible with the fundamental principles of the 1988 Constitution, capable of dealing with the political-social pluralism of contemporary society; a constitutional theory that develops a comparative legal study of Constitutional Jurisdiction, as well as institutional designs, with a view to the protection and realization of fundamental rights and democracy. Participating Faculty: Bernardo Gonçalves Alfredo Fernandes (coordinator), Francisco Castilho.

Law, Political Morality, Practical Rationality, and Normativity

This project focuses on the study of forms of normativity exhibited by social practices, prioritizing legal social practices, aiming to understand their openness to the demands of political morality and their tensions with the facticity of social processes in general. The study of morality and normativity of social practices and institutions (especially legal ones) developed in this project is based on investigations in the areas of philosophy of language and agency theory (developed in the analytical and pragmatist traditions), as well as in theories of justice, political philosophy, metaethics, and social theory. In this sense, the object of the project also encompasses the methods of cognition and application of law developed and improved in the 20th and 21st centuries, especially regarding the possibility and necessity of including value judgments in the conceptual treatment of legal and social practices. The project also studies the relevance of practical rationality incorporated into social practices and the degree of its instantiation by particular legal systems in the production of legitimacy and rational acceptance of law by participants in legal practices, as well as in the justification of the moral obligation of general obedience to law. Finally, the morality of social practices and the foundation of political obligation are also analyzed. Participating Faculty: David Francisco Lopes Gomes, Thiago Lopes Decat, Thomas da Rosa de Bustamante (coordinator), Bruno Camilloto Arantes (collaborator), Leonardo Gomes Penteado Rosa (collaborator).

Collective research projects in the research line 2
Human Rights and the Democratic Rule of Law

The Democratic Construction of Judicial Decisions: Judicial Guarantees as Human Rights

This project examines access to justice; the legal process as a guarantee, protection, and implementation of human rights; the constitutional model of the process; the principles and foundations of the process; multi-door justice: heteronomous and autonomous methods of conflict resolution; dejudicialization; the Judiciary, the administration of justice, and procedural management; jurisdictional protections and procedures; action and defense; the theory of judicial decision-making and precedents; means of challenging judicial decisions; effectiveness and reasonable duration of the process; collective process; and structural process. Participating Faculty: Edilson Vitorelli Diniz Lima, Érico Andrade, Fernando Gonzaga Jayme (coordinator), Gláucio Ferreira Maciel Gonçalves, Renata Christiana Vieira Maia, Tereza Cristina Sorice Baracho Thibau, Dierle José Coelho Nunes (collaborator), Flávio Couto Bernardes (collaborator), João Alberto de Almeida (collaborator).

Access to Justice through Rights, Consensual Conflict Resolution, Digital Justice, Collective Processes, and Rights

This project examines the foundations and theories surrounding access to justice through Rights, Collective Procedural and Substantive Law, Digital Justice, and Conflict Resolution, based on the essential assumptions and elements that influence their implementation. It aims to conduct critical research on: 1) the multiplicity of possibilities and blockages of different natures with a view to Access, Rights, and Justice; 2) the breadth of negotiated and/or consensual solutions to interpersonal, collective, and structural disputes in their forms, treatments, designs, mapping, and arenas of action; 3) the potential of Digital Justice, technology, and artificial intelligence in processes and procedures aimed at achieving Justice and the performance of the Judiciary. Participating Faculty: Adriana Goulart de Sena Orsini (coordinator), Edilson Vitorelli Diniz Lima, Tereza Cristina Sorice Baracho Thibau, Dierle José Coelho Nunes (collaborator).

Administration of Justice, Governance, and Public Policies

This project focuses on the construction of truth in the criminal process under democratic parameters; the criminal process as an instrument of power control and a means for identifying the model of the State; the principles and foundations of the criminal process; the essence of the effectiveness of the criminal process: overcoming the dispute between society and the individual; human rights as a cognitive opening for maintaining the legitimacy of the criminal process; the structuring of the autonomy of the criminal process based on values rather than technique; balancing in the criminal process; the democratic criminal procedural system: a look beyond the dichotomy between the accusatory and inquisitorial systems; evidence, procedural acts, procedures, and means of challenging decisions. Participating Faculty: Fernando Gonzaga Jayme, Glaucio Ferreira Maciel Gonçalves (coordinator), Felipe Martins Pinto (collaborator).

Production of Law, Interlegality, and Discursivity

This project examines the juridical nature of our time, marked by the circulation of legal models (including from the perspective of bijuralism) that transit in spaces of multinormativity and multilevel legislation. It investigates the tensions in the articulation between the discourses emanating from the various sources of law and their unfolding in the judicialization of public policies, the protection of collective rights, and legislative-regulatory proliferation; as well as the new conceptions and interlegalities in the formation of the normative circle, in the context of the turns and convergences of communication media (from pure orality to information technology). It relies both on the methodology of Legistics for the enucleation of methods and tools that guarantee greater enforceability and effectiveness of fundamental rights, and on the key of legal anthropology, which starts from various legal imaginaries and sensibilities, in order to contrast the law produced by official bureaucracies with legal expressions elaborated as “local knowledge” by different social groups. Participating Faculty: Camila Silva Nicácio, Fabiana de Menezes Soares (coordinator), Mônica Sette Lopes, Roberta Simões (collaborator).

Socio-spatial Justice, Right to the City and Territory

This project focuses on the city and territory as spaces where life stories and existences unfold and are modified by social, political, economic, and environmental processes. From an interdisciplinary perspective, it investigates the relationships between rights, alterity, sustainability, and urban and hydro-socio-environmental conflicts, along four thematic axes: a) right to the city; social, territorial, and cultural exclusion; traditional communities in urban areas; environmental justice; resistance processes and urban and environmental disasters; b) urban policy; City Statute; equitable usufruct of the city; popular participation and socio-spatial justice; c) right to adequate housing; urban planning; use-value; deterritorialization; and land regularization; d) homeless population and structural racism; centrality, autonomy, and protagonism of homeless people in the struggles for rights; production and strategic dissemination of data, information, evidence, and knowledge; dialogue with local, regional, and national practices and with international experiences. Participating Faculty: André Luiz Freitas Dias, Daniel Gaio (coordinator), Maria Fernanda Salcedo Repolês, Maria Tereza Fonseca Dias.

New Frontiers between Substantive and Procedural Law

This project focuses on the critical debate of the tensions that arise between substantive and procedural law, in the spheres of shaping, delimiting, and applying legal institutes. It investigates the characteristics, limits, and convergence between material and procedural relations, based on the recognition of procedurality as an indispensable element for the development of legal relations in their dynamic perspective, as well as their interdependence in the affirmation and effectiveness of rights (human, fundamental, and private). The project focuses both on the structure of private rights and their respective procedural consequences, as well as on the interrelationships developed between them from the perspective of conflict prevention and resolution. Participating Faculty: Christian Sahb Batista Lopes, Érico Andrade, Leonardo Netto Parentoni, Marcelo de Oliveira Milagres (coordinator), Mônica Sette Lopes.

Collective research projects in the research line 3
History, Power and Freedom

Constitution and Democracy: Theory, History, and Critical Dogmatics

This project examines the relationship between law and social struggles within the context of disputes between memory and forgetting the past, and utopian prospection for the future, in a tension between experiences and expectations. Its objective is to promote investigations that lead to a critical and comparative reconstruction of the theory of the constitution, transitions, and democracy, as well as the legal dogmatics of constitutional law, constitutional jurisdiction, and fundamental rights. Simultaneously, it aims to foster critical reflections capable of considering the relationship between the constitution and society, and the consequent convergence between constitutional theory and social theory. Participating Faculty: Adamo Dias Alves, David Francisco Lopes Gomes (coordinator), Emilio Peluso Neder Meyer, Francisco de Castilho Prates, Marcelo Andrade Cattoni de Oliveira.

Constitutionalism and Comparativism

This project critically examines the contemporary challenges and stresses confronting constitutionalism and its institutions. Adopting a transdisciplinary approach, the research draws upon insights from political philosophy, legal theory, constitutional and international law, and comparative legal studies. This multifaceted perspective aims to provide a robust defense and justification of the principles underpinning constitutional democracy while also offering a reinterpretation of the traditional foundations of liberal constitutionalism. The project challenges the ascendant neoliberal model by advocating for the revitalization of social-democratic principles within the context of Latin American, Eastern European, and Global South democracies. Furthermore, it scrutinizes the persistence of oppressive and exclusionary structures, the resurgence of authoritarianism, and the rise of illiberal governments, juxtaposing these phenomena against the core tenets of constitutionalism, democracy, and the rule of law. An additional objective is to analyze how new technologies, influence operations by state and non-state actors, and the erosion of popular sovereignty challenge democratic governance. In response, the project explores potential remedies through democratic legislation and international/transnational regulatory frameworks. Finally, the role of constitutional and supreme courts is examined and reinterpreted to elucidate the obligations of judges and other public officials in upholding constitutional principles. Participating Faculty: Emilio Peluso Neder Meyer (coordinator), Juliana Cesário Alvim Gomes, Thomas Da Rosa De Bustamante, Tímea Drinóczi.

Political Law

This project aims to critically analyze the political, ideological, cultural, and scientific-philosophical foundations of the process of elaborating a constitutional legal dogmatic, as a contribution and guarantee to the exercise of citizenship, education in human rights, and the defense of democratic institutions.  Participating Faculty: Adamo Dias Alves, Márcio Luís De Oliveira, Adriana Campos Silva (coordinator).

Marxist Critique of Political Economy, Law, and the State

This project focuses on the critique of the capitalist mode of production, the relationship between Law (especially regarding social rights and the union issue), class struggle, and modernity. It seeks to develop an openly anti-capitalist perspective, inspired by the work of Marx and Marxism. At the same time, it aims to conduct an in-depth reading of essential authors for this perspective (such as Marx, Lukács, Bensaïd, among others) and to understand the importance of such authors in order to keep in mind concrete tasks that arise for those who perceive that a technical approach to Law is absolutely uncritical and, therefore, profoundly disconnected from the reality of the operationalization of Law itself. In this context, it seeks to understand the tensions that may appear in the legal sphere, in a dialectical way, so to speak. The latter – the legal sphere – cannot be abandoned by those who are committed to the anti-capitalist struggle; but it is, in a more or less meandering way, linked to the societies that need to be overcome if an emancipatory perspective is assumed: namely, societies based on class antagonism.    Participating Faculty: Gustavo Seferian Scheffer Machado, Vitor Bartoletti Sartori (coordinator), Vera Aguiar Cotrim (collaborator).

Labor Law and Critique: Material and Procedural Dimensions

This project investigates the structuring dimensions of Labor Law and its correlation with the field of social critique. Three ideas, therefore, guide the project: the structuring dimensions, social critique, and the correlation that unfolds in Labor Law. These structuring dimensions encompass the socio-historical aspects that constitute the very matter of labor relations and their regulation by Law. On the one hand, the idea of social critique constitutes the theoretical backbone of the project, which feeds on reflections from these universes. The critique of political economy, theories of consciousness and collective action, the affirmation of subaltern knowledge, and counter-hegemonic legal theories are brought to the center of the reading of these phenomena in the world of work. From there, correlations are established. Disputes associated with the phenomenon of expropriated labor in the capitalist model, in its configurations of class, gender, race, and in its geopolitical designs crossed by coloniality. They also include the contemporary morphology of labor relations and the process of expanding the precariousness of living. Collective labor relations, intersectional struggles, the present forms of individual labor relations, the crossings of technology, the tensions between platform work and technological innovations, the challenges for algorithmic governance and the containment of transnational corporate power, the impacts around the subjectivity of those who work, modern forms of slavery, the environment and the critical perspectives of Labor Law on ecology and the climate crisis, involving areas such as rural, mining and energy sector work, in addition to Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization and other cultural perspectives of resistance to the capitalist mode of production and the colonial process make up the broad arc of disputes that materially constitute contemporary work and capital that project issues of enormous complexity for Labor Law, including in an international approach. The project wants to stimulate research that reads the foundations of Labor Law through these lenses, full of the concreteness of life and the displacements of criticism. Elements such as the union, freedom of association, the political movement of workers, the foundations of Collective Labor Law, the employment relationship as a power relationship, the constitutive elements of the employment contract and legal exclusions, the protective principle, time and remuneration, forms of hyper-exploitation and migratory flows of labor are reconsidered in this scenario. The project also problematizes the ancestral conflicts between capital and labor and thematizes the effectiveness of individual and collective labor rights, from the critical perspective of access to justice and the possibility for a culture of peace, with other complementary mechanisms for conflict resolution. From this approach, it is intended to advance in the expansion of the relationship between Labor Law and critique, always with a very careful understanding of the legal foundations of the branch itself and its renewed challenges in the disputes of the present and future of the material and procedural relations of work. Participating Faculty: Adriana Goulart de Sena Orsini, Antônio Gomes de Vasconcelos, Daniela Muradas Antunes (coordinator), Fabrício Bertini Pasquot Polido, Gustavo Seferian Scheffer Machado, Lívia Mendes Moreira Miraglia, Pedro Augusto Gravatá Nicoli, Victor Hugo Criscuolo Boson, Maria Rosaria Barbato.

Philosophy of Power and Radical Thought

The Collective Project brings together research that has as its object a radical critique of the philosophical discourses that shaped the construction of Law and the State in the West. By brushing the philosophical tradition against the grain, it seeks to bring to light underground or marginal currents of thought. It proposes to confront traditional theories of the State and Law, which conceal structures and devices of domination, such as gender, class, race, and sexuality, that normalize the exception and legitimize the violence of legal power. It is about placing the very foundations of contemporaneity under the scrutiny of philosophical critique, including its forms of subjection and government. It seeks to understand the processes and devices of the production of subjectivities, as well as the subversive practices of the author-function and subject-positions, with special attention to subjects marginalized by hegemonic powers. It proposes reflections on radical political alternatives of resistance, disobedience, emancipation, and liberation, capable of bringing to light the anti-democratic character of the legal habitus, from classrooms to courts. Thus, the present time is problematized so that the possibility of a decidedly critical approach to its fabric is opened, taking into account the way in which contemporary social relations are shaped.   Participating Faculty: Andityas Soares de Moura Costa Matos (coordinator), Marcelo Maciel Ramos, Marco Antônio Sousa Alves.

Philosophy of Private Law

This project focuses on three sub-areas of the law of obligations: contract law, tort law (or extra-contractual civil liability), and unjust enrichment. It is dedicated to the conceptual analysis of the conditions for civil liability (“lato sensu”) in each of these sub-areas, as well as explanatory and normative theories, with an emphasis, in the latter case, on the normative status of private law itself and on the relationships between private law, corrective (or commutative) justice, and distributive justice. Participating Faculty: Fabio Queiroz Pereira, Leandro Martins Zanitelli (coordinator).

Civil Law and Contemporary Legal Thought: Person, Autonomy, and Responsibility

This project seeks to understand civil law from the perspective of contemporary legal thought. The research developed is based on three different axes, namely “person,” “autonomy,” and “responsibility.” From these axes, investigations are developed that focus on the solution of new legal problems and the reinterpretation of Civil Law institutes, particularly from an interdisciplinary perspective. It is believed that dialogue with other fields of knowledge aids in the systemic understanding of the object of study, enabling the construction of more adequate solutions to the problems that arise. Participating Faculty: Fabio Queiroz Pereira (coordinator), Mariana Alves Lara.

Law and New Techno-sciences: Information, Neurosciences, and Biotechnologies

This collective project brings together research that has as its object the philosophical and legal reflection on new technosciences, especially issues related to new information and communication technologies, neurosciences, and biotechnologies. It seeks to develop theoretical and empirical studies with a critical dimension, addressing legal, ethical, and political aspects related to new technologies, with special attention to their social and human impacts. In the field of information and communication technologies, topics such as algorithmic governance, justice in the use of data, surveillance capitalism, platformization, data colonialism, algorithmic racism, the new informational ecosystem, the ideology of dataism, the regulation of digital platforms, and the fight against disinformation are addressed. In the domain of neurosciences, issues such as neurolaw, neuropolitics, neuroethics, the challenges of artificial intelligence, reflections on determinism and free will, cognitive biases, and decision-making in law are addressed. With regard to biotechnologies, topics such as the notion of person, bioethics, the dilemmas of genetic manipulation, the legal nature of animals, the hybridism between human and machine, the various concepts of human dignity, the waiver of personality rights, the possibility of selling gametes and organs, doping, and human enhancement are explored. Participating Faculty: Brunello Souza Stancioli (coordinator), Marco Antônio Sousa Alves, Renato César Cardoso.

Gender, Sexuality, and Law

This project focuses on the relationships between law, gender, and sexuality. It seeks to develop investigations into legal categories and practices, based on feminist and queer theories, proposing exercises in destabilization and reconstruction of the law. Its objectives include empirical and theoretical-critical investigations into legal institutions and processes, analyses of legal norms and discourses (doctrine, judicial decisions, laws, and administrative acts) that regulate or have a special effect on the lives of women and LGBTI+ people. It is interested in understanding both the broader social and institutional processes of production and incorporation of discourses and norms about gender and sexuality by Law, as well as legal production itself, through its agents, norms, processes, and structures, hierarchies, and positions based on gender and sexuality. Participating Faculty: Juliana Cesário Alvim Gomes, Lívia Mendes Moreira Miraglia, Marcelo Maciel Ramos (coordinator), Maria Fernanda Salcedo Repolês, Nathalia Lipovetsky e Silva, Pedro Augusto Gravatá Nicoli.

Criminal Law, Philosophy of Law, and Interdisciplinarity

This project focuses on recent discoveries in the fields of Psychology, Neuroscience, Genetics, and Computer Science and their direct impact on the theories of Law, crime, and punishment, the typification of new conducts, Criminology, and the recognition of new fundamental rights. Based on the interfaces between Criminal Law and Philosophy of Law, it seeks to trace their distinctions from morality and religion, grounding them in a secular humanist thought based on scientific knowledge and the fundamental rights of the human person. Participating Faculty: Tulio Lima Vianna (coordinator), Renato César Cardoso.

Collective research projects in the research line 4
State, Reason and History

Theory of Justice

This project investigates the historical trajectory of the idea of justice, in close connection with the demand for the effectiveness of Law. In development since the 1980s, it has produced within its scope “The Idea of Justice in Kant,” “The Idea of Justice in Hegel,” and the recent “The Idea of Justice in the Contemporary World.” The investigation unfolds in the direction of constructing a Theory of Justice connected to the legacy of Western thought and the ethical project of the Rule of Law, and capable of serving the Law. Participating Faculty: Antônio Álvares Da Silva, Marcelo Campos Galuppo, Ricardo Henrique Carvalho Salgado, Joaquim Carlos Salgado (coordinator).

European Studies in Comparative Perspectives: Sustainability, Regional Integration, Politicity, and New Technological Disruptions

This project focuses on European studies developed in Minas Gerais, starting from two vectors. The first investigative vector aims to situate the European legacy in the global context, reinforcing the role of “European civilizations” (Fernand Braudel) in the construction of global foreign policy. The second vector explores the results of European models of political forms in the Brazilian experience, especially in light of the intricate relationships between subnational entities established in our federalism. From a strongly interdisciplinary and markedly transversal perspective, the project aims to produce research in the field of sustainability studies within the scope of the right to development, European governance, and European Law. The project also integrates themes such as: European values, guidelines, and institutions; the international, legal, economic, diplomatic, and strategic plan; initiatives for regional collaboration and integration, from the European Union and Mercosur to international organizations for the protection and safeguarding of human rights; sustainable development and freedoms in economically integrated spaces; climate change, technological transformations, artificial intelligence, cutting-edge scientific and technological themes with an impact on human life; perspectives of law and comparative cultures, from legal-constitutional and legal-community systems to the fields of Comparative Political Theory, Comparative Constitutional Law, and Comparative Political Law; Governability and Governance, conceived from the European culture and enriched by the comparative perspective also in planning and public policies, especially in “smart cities”; Foreign relations, international politics, Geopolitics, Geostrategy, and Geoeconomics. Born from the implementation of European Studies at the UFMG Law School in 2014, especially the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence in European Studies, the project is funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Program. Participating Faculty: Carla Ribeiro Volpini Silva, Fabrício Bertini Pasquot Polido, Jamile Bergamaschine Mata Diz (coordinator), Mariah Brochado Ferreira, Márcio Luís De Oliveira, José Luiz Borges Horta, Leonardo Alves Correa, Giovani Clark (collaborator), Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant (collaborator), Saverio di Benedetto (collaborator).

Theory of Law and Philosophy of Law: Classical and Disruptive Perspectives

This project’s objects of study include the concept of law and theories of justice; philosophy as a reflection on the challenges of the present time; ethics and the philosophy of technology applied to law; technological disruptions and fundamental human rights; legal norms and their typology (rules and principles); hermeneutics, legal argumentation, and the application of law. Participating Faculty: Alexandre Travessoni Gomes Trivisonno (coordinator), Mariah Brochado Ferreira.

Macrophilosophy of the Rule of Law: Freedom, Dignity, and Democracy as Foundations of Political Law

This collective project houses a constellation of investigations that seek to introduce reflections on Politics, Law, and the State to the approach of Macrophilosophy, conceived as an effort to interdisciplinarize Philosophy itself, bringing it closer to other humanistic, historical, and cultural knowledge. Thus, with support in Philosophy, Theory, and the Sciences of State and Law, the research connects to the cultural turn that the Humanities are undergoing, towards a genuinely inter-, trans-, and even post-disciplinary gaze, providing a historical-cultural understanding of Law, the Constitution, and the State, their foundations and underpinnings. To this end, it explores receptions and formations of theories of Political Law, evoking institutional imagination as a task of advanced research. The project investigates the founding matrices of thought in the fields of Philosophy of the State, Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of the Constitution, and Philosophy of Culture, prioritizing the history of medieval and modern Philosophy and reaching the Enlightenment, Romanticism, German Idealism, as well as their developments. Participating Faculty: Karine Salgado, Raoni Macedo Bielschowsky, José Luiz Borges Horta (coordinator).

Legal Hermeneutics in Phenomenological and Epistemological Matricess

This project focuses on Legal Hermeneutics, founded on both phenomenology and epistemology, seeking to develop research, discussions, and advances in just solutions to conflicts and the realization of human and fundamental rights, regardless of the legal situation and subject matter in question. The plural and dialogical character of Hermeneutics, in addition to improving the understanding, interpretation, and resolution of conflicts in the various vectors of application of law, also proposes to reach and act favorably on the new legal problems arising from the issues projected by the technologized and computerized society through virtual means of communication. Hermeneutics, in addition to its dialogue with other legal disciplines and the practice of law, opens up to various other fields of knowledge, favoring legal socialization, the relationship between juridification, judicialization, and contractualization. In short, it promotes legality in a broad sense, at the level of openness to the elaborative means of legislation (Legislative) and its application, aiming at its maximum concreteness through the effective and active work of the Judiciary and its complementary systems. Participating Faculty: Maria Helena Damasceno e Silva Megale (coordinator), Ricardo Henrique Carvalho Salgado.

History of Legal Culture

The project houses research on the history of law in the West that understands law as a cultural and historically situated phenomenon. This implies moving away, simultaneously, from approaches that elevate law to a timeless dimension and from those that reduce it to a mere reflection of society. Due to the inherent complexity of law and the various ways in which it relates to its contexts, this type of emphasis requires the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary bias of legal historiography. Furthermore, legal cultures transcend political borders, which is why our approaches tend to highlight the international circulation of models (ideological, legislative, etc.) from the perspectives of comparative legal history. In this way, it is possible to avoid reducing the relationships between legal cultures to stories of diffusion or influence. In the configuration of legal culture at each historical moment, the aspects that most interest us revolve around the dynamics of normative production, legal literature, the international order, labor relations, and the role of the State. Participating Faculty: Karine Salgado, Lucas Carlos Lima, Ricardo Sontag, Victor Hugo Criscuolo Boson.