Direitos Fundamentais e Direitos Humanos

"In 1603, Dutch Admiral Jacob van Heemskerk plundered a Portuguese merchantman, the Santa Catarina, travelling from Macao to Melaka. The sale of the cargo at a public auction made traders across Northern Europe aware of the riches to be reaped from Asian trade. However, the episode raised legal questions and the United Dutch East India Company (VOC) commissioned the young Hugo Grotius to defend Heemskerk's actions. Grotius produced two classic legal texts, The Law of Price and Booty and its spin-off, The Free Sea, among the greatest works in the history of international legal and political thought. His observations dealt with free trade in the East Indies, the Dutch Republic's military conflict with the Portuguese and Spanish in Asia, and the legal and moral grounds for attacking and plundering Portuguese and Spanish mercantile shipping.

This book considers the background to the treaties then content and significances, and what Grotius actually knew about Southeast Asian politics and Portuguese institutions of trade and diplomacy when he wrote them.

Grotius' work on the freedom of the sea was a cornerstone in his enduring reputation as one of the founders of modern international law. The present book provides a valuable resource for historians of Southeast Asia and for students of international relations, political theory, maritime history and public law.
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El presente artículo tiene por objeto hacer un examen preliminar de un manuscrito, hasta la fecha desconocido e inédito, del gran humanista y abogado internacional holandés Hugo Grocio. En dicho manuscrito, Grocio se ocupa, esencialmente, de la formación de una sociedad civil basada en un arreglo contractual, y a su vez, examina los derechos y las obligaciones que emanan de ese pacto o contrato voluntario.

"Four hundred years ago, the Dutch humanist and jurisconsult Hugo Grotius was commissioned by the United Netherlands’ East India Company (VOC) to write a defense of Admiral Jakob van Heemskerk’s seizure of a Portuguese merchant carrack in the Straits of Singapore (February 1603). At the time he was twenty-one years old. What Grotius produced between 1604 and 1606 is a comprehensive political and historical exposé on war. Today, this work is known as De Jure Praedae Commentarius, or “Commentary on Law of Prize and Booty”. Only part of this comprehensive manuscript was published during its author’s lifetime and is known as Mare Liberum or “The Free Sea” (1609).
Mare Liberum is essentially a propagandistic treatise and argues for Holland’s merchants to freely access emporia in Asia by unimpeded navigation across the high seas. The freedom of navigation forms a subset to the overarching arguments on the freedom of access and trade. This particular assessment of Mare Liberum stands in sharp contrast to past interpretations, insofar as these have placed the ‘freedom of the seas’ - and not the broader issues surrounding ‘free trade’ - at the forefront of scholarly attention. From this vantage point, Grotius was surprisingly consistent in his thinking on the broader issues of maritime trade and navigation.
During the first two decades of the seventeenth century, Grotius lent a helping hand in the process of forging political and commercial treaties between the VOC and Asian rulers. Far from championing peace and the freedom of navigation on the high seas for which the Dutch humanist is best remembered in modern times, Grotius should also assume a place among the intellectual fathers of Dutch colonial rule in Asia."""""

A Constituição Brasileira, às vésperas de seu 25º aniversário, abriga uma larga lista de direitos socioeconômicos, revelando um compromisso com a transformação social e a inclusão. Estes direitos tem sido assegurados pelo Judiciário como importante agente na promoção da desejada mudança na exclusão social e pobreza. A aptidão institucional proclamada pelo Judiciário para controlar políticas públicas pode levar, não obstante as nobres intenções de juízes e das cortes, não a uma real transformação, mas à regressão social e a uma democracia enfraquecida. Impõe-se portanto reconsiderar a estratégia utilizada pelo Judiciário na solução destes conflitos. Um novo modelo deve incorporar uma dimensão distinta de diálogo, participação social e reconhecimento dos destinatários da política pública controlada como cidadãos autônomos, aos quais se tenha reconhecida, por sua própria dignidade humana, a possibilidade de integrar os processos de escolhas públicas que definem o conteúdo de seus próprios direitos fundamentais.