Right to health and sanitary democracy: Bridges to citizenship

Rights are the democratic centerpieces of contemporary society, which major challenge is the strengthening of participative social forums as spaces that shape the contents of such rights. This is the subject of research project “Right to Health and Sanitary Democracy: Bridges to citizenship”, advanced by the Center for Study and Research on Health Law at Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil). We note the associated development of new institutions involved in policy-making alongside a process leading to an essential role of judges in the recent changes in our democracy. Also in this direction, the expansion of public policies managing experiences by the local councils (Law n. 8142/90), in consonance with the social participation established by the Constitution. Our main objective is identifying the recent status of institutional and/or legal recognition of health as a right, as well as qualifying the social participation mechanisms used by the Judiciary for realizing of the social right to health. We also aim to examine the way deliberations in participative social forums are regarded in legal decisions and how those decisions can interfere in guaranteeing the right to health. In this study, we examine the understandings by judges from the Regional Federal Court from the 3^rd region, paying special attention to the reasoning behind the decision they made, incorporating the advice from R. Posner, the way “how judges think”. We applied questionnaires to collect information about each judge and their modes of organization, enabled the conception of “ideal types”. Judges responded to hypothetical study cases related to the right of health, drawn in a way to allow the observance the reasoning behind them, noting also the foundations of the judges’ answers, which provides us with a panorama of how legal decisions can be helpful in the implementation of public policy.