DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTIONALISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS GREENING: CHALLENGES AND COMMON CONSTRUCTIONS

Abstract

This article aims at analyzing the phenomenon of democratic constitutionalism and human rights greening,  listing some of their common challenges and, especially, the possibilities and urgencies of a more integrated performance among them so as to favor full participation and citizenship, and, as a consequence, to strengthen one another. The contradictions of neoliberal globalization are the starting point for the assessment of the position of the constitutional theory - from the perspective of democratic constitutionalism - and of the field of human rights - including the analysis of the different understandings surrounding this concept -, as well as the impacts of its progressive greening. The ambiguities of the international protection of human rights as an indivisible system, characterized by the deficits of effectiveness regarding economic, social and cultural rights, and enlarged by the inclusion of the environmental speech, can only be overcome by their links with the ideas and instruments of the democratic constitutionalism and, especially, through the mobilization of the claiming and fighting energies of the society.