Covid-19 Through Brazilian Courts: The Deserving and the Undeserving Vulnerable

Abstract

Looking into these times of neoconservatism in Brazil, marked by a far-right agenda and populism, this Article explores the role of vulnerability (as a legal theory, a legal principle or factual consideration) in the litigation prompted by the pandemic in Brazil. The usages of vulnerability as a form of resistance to the denial of their identity and vulnerable condition show that vulnerability can take different forms through litigants and may have an independent meaning to what is defined in legal theory or law. This is most evident by the fact that litigants dispute government policies based on ideologies that contest their identities (and not merely their vulnerability). Four case studies substantiate this Article with lawsuits brought to higher courts by judicially active groups: prisoners, indigenous people, Afro-Brazilian ethnic communities and gig economy drivers. They are what I call “undeserving vulnerables”, groups discriminated from a legally recognized vulnerable group through attacks to their identity.