Animalist notes from the National Constituent Assembly of 1987-1988:

brazilian animal constitucionalism's birthplace

Abstract

The article analyzes the material and formal substrates that conferred, to the work of the National Constituent Assembly of 1987-1988, the opening, the development and the sedimentation of the protection of animal rights in the Brazilian constitucional order, from the driving rule of the prohibition to cruelty. Under the historical cut-out of the maturation of environmentalism in the country, added to the animal protection movement's predilections, it goes through the initial works of the National Constituent Assembly, whose animalist debates were centered in the Subcomission of Healthy, Security and Environment. In the sequence, a more detailed analysis is made of the power lines in dispute about the position that animals would occupy in the political charter under construction, by going through some of the acts of the so-called National Front Ecological Action and the suggestions from congress members, from the third sector, and from citizens about a legal regime attentive (or not) to other species. Finally, the text moves forward through the developments that took place in the National Constituent Assembly until the confection of its final product: the article 225, 1, VII, of the Brazilian Constitution. To this end, the investigation is conducted through qualitative research, with the adoption of the methodological procedures of bibliographic research and documentary analysis of primary sources. In conclusion, the mobilizations orchestred by the civil society, conjugated to the attemps of parliamentarians to strengthen the active interest groups in the Constituent, guaranteed to the animals the titularization of rights and the programming of animalist vectors, even if under the threats of the derivative constituent power. Here comes the sacredness of the Brazilian animal constitucionalism.