Law and Public Policy Approach: the dynamics of shaping legal mechanisms to enforce human rights, empower social networks and help preventing political setbacks

The Law and Public Policy approach studies the dynamics by which human rights, made normatively mandatory, determine public policies. The law gets directly involved in: i) shaping legal-institutional arrangements of public policies; ii) distributing responsibilities between public and private entities; iii) modeling forms of coordination between them; iv) fulfilling the gaps between constitutional and executive provisions necessary to organize action towards planned objectives; v) structuring legal mechanisms of control, focused on substantive aspects, giving rise to judicialization. Public policies mobilize different communities and networks of activists and professionals. Due to specific political compositions, sound results can be achieved by sectors. And this can be a key factor of resistance to political setbacks. Comparative data of policies disciplined in the Constitution – health and education – when confronted with those that were not, such as public security, shows this.