Mestrado em direito FUMEC

Contemporary sociologists use the term Social Institutions to refer to complex social forms that reproduce themselves, such as governments, the family, human languages, universities, hospitals, businesses, and legal systems. A typical definition of these institutions is that uttered by Jonathan Turner as: “a complex of positions, roles, norms and values allocated to particular types of social structures and relatively organized stable patterns of human activities, with respect to fundamental problems, to produce sustainable sources of life and to reproduce viable individuals and societal structures within a given environment” (TURNER, Jonathan. Structure of Sociological Theory. 5th ed. Florence, Kentucky, USA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1990.). It is in this complex societal environment and against the backdrop of democratic theories that legal norms are produced, applied and understood. In view of the complexity of the study of democratic theories in post-traditional societies, the legal phenomenon can be understood in the light of varied theoretical foundations. The area of concentration of the course seeks theoretical and conceptual expansion that overcomes the epistemological bases that work in a limited way the legal-social phenomenon, both in the public and private spheres. Consequently, the area of concentration in focus is instigating and challenging new proposals for understanding and interpreting Social Institutions, to be rebuilt in the political precinct of constitutional democracy. In short, it is a matter of redesigning a new social pact, which implies the re-equation of the role of the State in society, as well as the need for full and effective protection of the individual in the face of any and all forms of power (“old” or “new”, public or private).