The moral conflicts faced by judges concerning health related claims: the case of Brazilian federal courts

Abstract

In the field of philosophy of law the debate about the possible connections between law and morality is very common. Judges with jurisdiction over health matters often address important moral issues that must be considered in order to provide a solution to the facts. On these occasions, judges may experience situations of conflict, once they will have to decide pressed by their own moral convictions, which will not always be in accordance with the solution pointed out by the simple application of the law. In this article, we propose to investigate how Brazilian federal courts have been appreciating questions of moral nature in health related demands, concerned more specifically with the moral conflicts experienced by magistrates. In order to achieve our goal, we selected three important issues  ith recognized potential to challenge the moral convictions of magistrates, commonly faced in health claims in the courts around the country, and we verified how these issues are being decided in the federal regional courts, focusing mainly on the arguments used by the judges in their decisions, in order to conclude whether such conflicts exist or not.