O princípio da publicidade no Direito Administrativo brasileiro

Abstract

The objective of this scientific work is to unveil the legal content of the constitutional principle of administrative publicity. It aims to identify what precisely the principle prescribes to the Public Administration and which legal position it bestows upon citizens. The relevance of the theme derives from the importance of the principle for the legal order and the absence of correct apprehension and delimitation of its content. Publicity is presupposed in a Democratic State of Law and in a republican form of government, since it assures visibility regarding the exercise of power. The necessity of the theme is also justified by the fact that measures taken by the State in order to insure effectiveness to the principle are recurrent. Laws and administrative acts, directed to give concreteness to the principle, must be interpreted and applied according to the latter. This work targets to precise the notion of publicity from elements extracted from the Constitution of the Republic and to verify its fundaments, the functions it displays in Brazilian legal order and its relation with transparency. The research also examines the principle’s subjective scope of applicability, in order to delimit who must obey it, and its relation with other principles that constrain the administrative function. At last, some important expressions of publicity in Brazilian Administrative Law are analyzed, with a view to evaluate how infra-constitutional legislation ensures effectiveness to publicity