Natural Law and the Brazilian Constitutional Order

The Origins of ‘Neoconstitutionihilism’ in Modern Natural Law

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between Natural Law and the Brazilian constitutional order, marked by the prevalence of neo-constitutionalismo. Taking William of Ockham’s doctrine as the starting point of Modern Natural Law, going through Hobbes’s and Locke’s thought, and arriving at Sieyes, we aim to show that neo-constitutionalism, far from constituting something new, is only a new stage in the devel-opment of these latter doctrines, which are at root nominalistic and antimetaphysical, and thus do not properly overcome Kelsen’s positivism. This latter is also voluntaristic in its foundations. We conclude with a return to the Thomistic metaphysics of the intensive act of being as the foundation for a renewed juridical order.