Localized re-definition of legal justice: the feminine of the south in the early constitutional transition and its practice by the Consumer Protection Office of the MPDFT-Brasilia-Brazil - a framework for cross-border disputes in EC Consumer Law and policy
View/ Open
Oliveira2009.doc (1.235Mb)
Date
2009Author
Oliveira, Lúcia Helena Barbosa de
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis presents an alternative reading of law as a way to settle
conflicts and dispense justice through the eyes of the feminine and their ethics of
care as elaborated by Carol Gilligan. An elective articulation between cultural
feminism and postmodern ethics has been defended rather than coincidence. It shows
the aporias of modernity through the reading of postmodernity, especially the
undeniable exigencies of Levinas’ ethics of alterity and the reading done by Derrida
of Benjamin’s characterization of law as violence. The challenges of postmodernity
in those respects remain and then the findings of Gilligan’s different voice are
articulated to offer a possible Aufhebung . No coincidence is defended but a proper
articulation is defended. This thesis defends a reconceptualisation of justice as a
feminine virtue within a postmodern paradigm of law and its rematerialization and
reflexiveness as well the advancement of Relational Contract Theory and Need-
Oriented Contact Theory. It explores early practices of Consumer Protection Office
of MPDFT-Brasilia-Brazil which were responding to a transition constitutional
situation after the redemocratization of the country and were an institutional lost
paradigm of justice as a feminine virtue. The desired outcome is to identify a
possible framework for justice as care, considering a manifold diagnosed gap in
consumer justice in the EC.