Vulnerabilidade e Direito

Within the framework of the Coimbra Institute for Legal Research’s “Social Challenges, Uncertainty and Law: Plurality, Vulnerability, Undecidability project”, a set of challenges to law in increasingly digital societies is identified as the guideline. 4.0 sums up the horizon of uncertainty resulting from a plurality and hypercomplexity that generate serious problems of (un)decidability. Topics specifically considered include frailty and vulnerability(s), both personal and systemic, in the health and family fields, along with their projections in procedural terms (namely access to law), and also error in criminal law. As for the social challenges, recurring issues - like the position (i.e. how to translate that into the legal realm) of the most vulnerable individuals and social groups (e.g, the elderly, minors, prisoners, members of ethnic and religious minorities, patients, physically or mentally challenged people, immigrants, the poor, among others) – intersect with issues brought about by the so-called “GNR revolution” (Genetics, Nanotechnology, Robotics), so that issues like Big data and data protection in the context of an algorithmic revolution, along with more radical projects touching the human condition [transhumanism(s) and posthumanism(s)] are addressed as well. As all this develops in a global world, voices from Europe and from the planet (namely the Portuguese-speaking legal scholarship) are taken into account dialogically and as a network, while taking seriously diversity and plurality from the different continents as well. Favouring (inter)(trans)disciplinarity, in addition to doctrinal studies aiming to help administrative and court decisions, legislative proposals are drawn up to strengthen legal protection, especially for the most vulnerable; along the same line, some contributions are proposed for international (e.g., WHO) and supranational (European Union) institutions.

Coordination: João Carlos Simões Gonçalves Loureiro