BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS / Šturma, Mozetic (eds)

the legal duty to clarify in advance the concepts under which they are operating at the time of the decision), the circumstances that comprise a specific case and the coherent reconstruction of the institutional history of the law, which includes the legislation, jurisprudence and doctrine of the law. As a result, we reject the procedures and methodologies outright. The only way to demonstrate the validity of this thesis is to reconstruct a specific case in which one can discern a constitutionally appropriate response. 4.1 Hermeneutics and principles that conform the application of law in a democratic state Therefore, a new hermeneutic perspective has been forged within the Brazilian doctrine 16 from two paradigmatic ruptures: the revolution of constitutionalism, which institutionalized a high degree of autonomy for the law, and the revolution caused by the linguistic-ontological-turn. On the one hand, the existence of the Constitution requires a definition of the substantial duties of public powers that goes beyond liberal constitutionalism and reduces the legislature’s degree of discretion as well as that of the judiciary in so-called hard cases. On the other hand, based on the advances in the theory of law, one can argue that a priori responses do not exist with regard to the meaning of a law that arises from procedures or methods of interpretation. In this sense, concepts that claim to encompass a priori all of the assumptions of the interpretation process do nothing more than reduce the interpretation to an analytical process. This process systematically and logically analyzes the language to discover the meaning of the diction and the statements. Thus, this process renders the language hostage to what Dworkin calls a semantic sting. We do not perceive (split) the texts in a distinct way and then attach meaning to them. That is, if the act of interpretation, which is always comprehensive/applicable, is singular, then the text (i.e., the Constitution) is not and does not appear to us to be naked, as if the text was at our disposal. However, this distinction disappears between structure and normative content. Therefore, we cannot forget that the various forms of subjectivism have found the means to politically and ideologically control the interpretation process by showing the hermeneutic as the product of a reasoning that is performed in stages. Hence, we place great importance on the method, which has always had the function of isolating the norm (i.e., the meaning of the text) from its implementation. Moreover, we point out that, compared with our understanding of other phenomena, a juridical hermeneutic has one specific nature. That is, the hermeneutical process has an array of meaning, which is the product of a constitutional process that cannot be changed except through the same rules present in the originating process itself. This difference is critical . The Constitution is the content link that connects politics and law. 16 The proposals presented here can be reviewed in the following works: STRECK, L. L.: Verdade e Consenso. 4th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Lumen Juris, 2011; STRECK, L. L.: O que é isto – decido conforme minha consciência? Porto Alegre: Livraria do Advogado, 2011. In line with the projections made in this work, the following works are also important: RAMIRES, M.: Crítica à aplicação de precedentes no direito brasileiro. Porto Alegre: Livraria do Advogado, 2010; TOMAZ DE OLIVEIRA, R.: Decisão Judicial e o Conceito de Princípio: hermenêutica e (in)determinação do direito. Porto Alegre: Livraria do Advogado, 2008.

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