The Political Constitution of the Empire of Brazil, commonly referred to as the Constitution of 1824, was Brazil's first constitution and remained in force for 65 years. It was issued at the emperor's request, unilaterally imposed by the will of emperor Pedro I, who had ordered it from the Council of State. It was the longest-running constitution in Brazil that remained in power during the Empire of Brazil. The constitution's innovations included freedom of religious worship, freedom of the press and opinion, and the institution of the Moderating Power.

The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and (until 1828) Uruguay. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Dom Pedro I and his son Dom Pedro II. A colony of the Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil became the seat of the Portuguese colonial Empire in 1808, when the Portuguese Prince regent, later King Dom João VI, fled from Napoleon's invasion of Portugal and established himself and his government in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. João VI later returned to Portugal, leaving his eldest son and heir, Pedro, to rule the Kingdom of Brazil as regent. On 7 September 1822, Pedro declared the independence of Brazil and, after waging a successful war against his father's kingdom, was acclaimed on 12 October as Pedro I, the first Emperor of Brazil. The new country was huge but sparsely populated and ethnically diverse.

The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and Uruguay. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Dom Pedro I and his son Dom Pedro II.

The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and Uruguay. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Dom Pedro I and his son Dom Pedro II.

This book offers an original and comprehensive analysis of Brazilian constitutional law and shows how the 1988 Constitution has been a cornerstone in Brazil's struggle to achieve institutional stability and promote the enforcement of fundamental rights. In the realm of rights, although much has been done to decrease the gap between constitutional text and constitutional practice, several types of inequalities still affect and sometimes impair the enforcement of the ambitious bill of rights laid down by the Brazilian Constitution. Within the organisation of powers, the book not only describes how its legislative, executive and judicial functions are organised, but above all else, it analyses how a politically fragmented National Congress, a powerful President and an activist Supreme Court engage with each other in ways that one could hardly grasp by reading the constitutional text without contextual analysis. Similarly, the book also shows how the three-tiered federation established in 1988 has undergone a process of centralisation led not only by the central government but also by the Brazilian Supreme Court. In addition to chapters on organisation of powers, fundamental rights, federalism, and the legislative process, the book also presents an overview of Brazilian constitutionalism with a special focus on the transition from authoritarianism to democracy, which led to the enactment of the 1988 Constitution. In the conclusion, the author argues that part of the Constitution's transformative potential remains to be realised. Enforcing the Constitution, not changing it, has been the real challenge in the last three decades and will continue to be for many years to come.

Prints several papers read aloud at the meeting of the American Historical Association in December, 1937 on the sesquicentennial anniversary of the United States Constitution. Provides the background of the thinking of the framers of the Constitution, an analysis of some phases of the Constitution and a study of its influence.

The Unwritten Brazilian Constitution offers an unexplored topic outside Portuguese language: the leading cases on human rights in the Brazilian Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal – STF). The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 represents an institutional framework able to restructure the relationship between the powers after the military dictatorship. The constituents drafted the Brazilian Constitution in order to set an extensive system of judicial protection for fundamental rights, by means of several instruments that have strengthened access to the Judiciary. Because the Brazilian Constitution has an extensive list of fundamental rights, the STF was called to interpret them several times and it developed an unwritten understanding of these fundamental rights. These decisions are not available to the international community since they are not translated to English. Based on this gap, this original book illustrates the main rulings on human rights analyzed by great scholars in Brazil. The text presents a deep discussion regarding the characteristics of the cases and demonstrates how the STF has built the legal arguments to interpret the extension of the fundamental rights.