Time and law to healthcare development

Abstract

In accordance with current trends in the Brazilian constitutional doctrine, the discussions on health care as a right remain centered upon the efficacy of the law and the consequences of its different interpretations within the legal system. The purpose of this study is to verify the relationships between time and law in the development of the country’s health care system. Thus, its focus is on the way in which the law attempts to control time, particularly concerning questions of health care. To this end, the methodology used is based on the structural functionalism of Niklas Luhmann and on the autopoietic aspect of his theory on autopoietic social systems. The results show that the Brazilian legal system acts in a paradoxical way when it comes to health care; it attempts to focus on the future but is stuck in the past when it attempts to develop a socio-juridical description of health care laws in the present.