Cursos / 3º Ciclo / Faculty of Law :: Law

PODER, ESTADO E DIREITOS FUNDAMENTAIS - 2026/2027

1º curricular year
Semestralidade: 2nd semester
ECTS: 10

Teachers

Leading Teacher: Prof. Doutora Maria Leonor Esteves
Assistant Professor: Prof. Doutora Maria Leonor Esteves

Class type and School hours

Seminário : 1 Horas

Teaching Language

Portuguese

Main Aims/Objectives

To determine the conceptual structures of the theory that postulates the requirement for a constitutional guarantee of basic human rights as an (insurmountable) frontier of political power by studying ideas about the relationship between the state, as an apparatus of power, and the human person, in its historicity and materialization.

Specific Aims/Objectives

To understand the complexity of the historical process and of the ideas that shape the theory of limits to state power and the philosophy of fundamental rights, which is characterized by discontinuities and asymmetrical ruptures rather than radical ruptures. And that, rather than from a purely causal-teleological perspective, it is essential to seek out the genetic elements of contemporary forms of thought in the frameworks of thought of the past.

Skills to be acquired

Development of a critical reflexive perspective on the problems raised during the course.

Teaching Procedures

Encouragement to investigate and debate the theoretical problems dealt with through oral or textual exposition.

Programme

Elements for a theory of the limits of power. Fundamental rights as the (insurmountable) frontier of political power.
1. Genesis. Stoic thought.
2. Thomas Aquinas and the interpretation of Christian ethics in understanding the relationship between man and political power.
3. Christian humanism in confronting the relations of domination of the Western Empires over the natives of the New World. António Vieira and Bartolomé de las Casas.
The jusnaturalism of Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suarez.
4. The ontological imperfectibility of man as the cause of the incurable inexistence of limits to the power of the Sovereign - Machiavelli (and subsidiaries, from Hobbes to Schmitt). Approaching the concept of ‘sovereignty’. The ‘reason of state’ and the ‘case of necessity based on an exceptional situation’, previously rational and teleologically based, are now determined by the will of the Ruler, which is the hallmark of sovereignty.
5. The Enlightenment. Criticism of absolutism. The jusrationalist conception of human rights as a limit on state power within the framework of contractualist theory. Primacy of law and separation of powers. The institutionalization of rights and their guarantees in the Constitution. Allusion to the essence of the thinking of Montesquieu, Sièyes, Locke and Filangieri. The constitution as fundamental law, expressing the natural rights of man, an ‘end in himself’, endowed with an intangible dignity, in Kantean thought, which is contrasted with the Hegelian idea of an end-in-itself state.
6. From the absolute state to the liberal state. Antinomies of contractualism and the formal conception of human rights that underpins an ideology of domination and founds and consolidates a state of ‘white’, ‘male’ ‘owners’.
7. Human rights and the dynamics of 19th century imperialism.
8. Renewal of the performative and imposing concept of sovereignty in Austin´s thought.
9. The questioning of rationalism, the humanist tradition and liberal egalitarianism on which fundamental human rights are based. Nietzsche´s demolishing critique. Theories of conflict, between races, between nations, between classes, between friend/enemy, based on a conception of history as a permanent struggle that is nourisched by social Darwinism and which will form the basis of the authoritarian and totalitarian ideologies and regimes of the 20th century.
0. International crimes, established in the second decade of the 20th century, reflecting the abusive exercise of de facto or constituted power, materialize the most serious offences against human values in need of international criminal protection.

Evaluation Type

Attendance, active participation and on-time compliance of previously agreed research tasks

Teaching Resources

Bibliography

Sustainability Objectives

Keywords

power
state
humanity
constitution
fundamental rights
rule of law
human dignity
international crimes

Main Bibliography

Complementary Bibliography