Handling social problems in the courts: repercussions for social assistants in the Judiciary Branch

• Main Authors: Beatriz Gershenson Aguinsky, Ecléria Huff de Alencastro
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina 2006-04-01
• Series: Revista Katálysis
• Subjects: questão social; direitos; políticas públicas; judicialização; social question; rights; public policies; judicial involvement
• Online Access: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/katalysis/article/view/5926
• ISSN: 1414-4980; 1982-0259

Although the civilizing conquests of human rights are undeniable, their recognition and enactment have required, in addition to increasingly intense historic struggles, the involvement of the Judicial Branch. The judicial treatment of social issues overlaps the responsibilities of the Judiciary with other public institutions. Access to justice takes place, as a rule, individually and by a select group of subjects – those who know how to access this legal channel. But the effective enactment of rights depends on other factors that include not only its recognition, but the capacity to attend to and finance the demand presented. Given this situation, this paper discusses the process of the effective enactment of rights, which by increasingly emphasizing judicial channels, leads to a reduced commitment of the State as a whole, to face social issues and toward the depoliticization of the public sphere. This adverse situation challenges social assistants to take an ethical-political direction in their professional responses to the demands of judicialization of the social question that is presented daily to the Judicial Branch.