Contributions to the discussion of health judicialization in Brazil

Abstract

Brazilian Constitution Article 196 ensures health as "a right to the people and a duty to the State". However, this right has not been guaranteed in regular basis. Considering this contradiction, groups in the Civil Society has been seeking in Courts the materialization of their rights. Recently, Judiciary Power and the Prosecuting Counsel have been acting in the field of health what could be perceived as a form of "judicialization of this politics." This term, however, needs better definition to identify more precisely the depth of this phenomenon in Brazil. Initially it can be distinguished two schools: one that sees the political activism as a legal obstacle to the development of citizenship and other that attaches to this phenomenon a form of enhancing the own citizenship. Brazilian health sector has conditions to support both arguments. Therefore, the most important is precisely the double effect of the diversity of the judicialization of health.