Jurisdiction, Hegemony and Integrity: A Post-structuralist Approach to Law and its Relation with Society and Politics in Brazil

This article aims to link the theory of discourse developed by Laclau and Mouffe to the analysis of contemporary law. According to the proposed by the article, contemporary law is victim of a crisis that destabilizes its foundations, justifying their study under a post-structuralist approach. For this task, the articlemobilizes the notion of hegemony developed by Laclau and Mouffe, but links the abstract reflections of the authors about society in general with three dimensions of legal phenomena in particular: 1. The judicial institutions and their relationship with the socio-political environment, 2. The practices of jurisdiction and litigation, and 3. The judicial decision itself. For the first dimension, I will use the work of Nonet and Selznick. For the second, I will take the legal theory of Dworkin. And, for the third, I will make reference to some important recent decisions of Brazilian Supreme Court.