"Exception constitutionnelle sanitaire" ? Une analyse comparative des mesures d'urgence contre le Covid-19 en France et au Brésil

Abstract

The global crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic put a series of emergency measures on the table of the governments of the States most affected by it, which, in the name of public health protection, raise serious doubts about its compatibility with the universal protection of human rights. Many of these restrictive measures, by absolutely limiting very basic individual liberties, come to be interpreted as real constitutional exceptions. In this sense, we will remember the contributions of Carl Schmitt’s thought on the subject, but with the specific purpose of demonstrating the dangers that arise from new and varied “sovereigns” deciding in a state of exception. In the second part of the research, we intend to analyze the respective constitutional foundations that led France and Brazil to adopt measures so distant in the procedural aspects, but that are very close in the sense of instrumentalizing a possible new form of exception, that is, the constitutional health exception.