Institutional PortalUFPEL

Fundamentals of Environmental Law
 
Brazilian society is going through a moment of deep transformation. Thereby, a constant opening to innovative experiences both in political and legal terms has been noticed since the transition into democracy in the 1980s. The Constitution ratified in 1988 clearly represents a paradigm shift for the Brazilian law. The phenomenon of the law’s constitutionalization has been deeply absorbed not only by lawyers, but also by society as a whole, which has adopted a vindictive attitude for the rights provided in the Constitution. As the social constitutionalism denounced the individualism of the 19th-century Napoleonic Code, the insurgent environmental constitutionalism seeks to denounce the anthropocentrism of contemporaneity. A society that takes responsibility for the future generations cannot accept the use of new technologies at any expense. It demands government to take a supervisory position capable of avoiding the ecological disaster whose incidence and extent can affect life on Earth.
    
Environmental Preservation and the State
 
Studying environmental preservation and the State shall point out which legal instruments are suitable for the government to take action in order to meet the expectations of the new society, now worried about the survival of the planet’s ecosystems.  Taking into account the phenomenon of globalization, it can be noticed that environmental issues guide both the drafting and the applicability of bills, from International Law to its effectual application within administrative, tax and criminal law.    

Society and Environment
An important paradigm shift in Environmental Law demands a new project for social life. Therefore, relating the themes of society and environment is a way to promote a new civility. The civilizational project is open to discussion. Contemporary Civil Law has led us into a patrimonialisation of law that was redesigned in the 1988 Constitution, and those new aspects were later included in the 2002 New Civil Code, especially in what concerns the themes of civil property and responsibility.
 

According to its new regulations, the non-degree graduate program in Environmental Law offers a number of compulsory and elective courses. A minimum of 22 credits amounting to a total of 374 credit hours are required for the successful completion of the Program.
The minimum courses required for successful completion of the Program must be taken within a period of four semesters before students defend their theses. Theses might be submitted to the examination board for evaluation before students fully complete their credits. The Program also provides a teaching practice training, which will not earn students any credits towards the degree, but which will certainly be registered in their academic transcripts.