The Control of Conventionality in the Brazilian Legal System

The control of the conventionality of laws was introduced into the national legal system by paragraph 3 of article 5 of the Federal Constitution, through Constitutional Amendment 45 of 2004. It was only in 2006 that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, to whose jurisdiction the Brazilian state has been subject since 1998, began to use the term control of conventionality in its judgements, condemning several states that are subject to its jurisdiction to make their domestic rules compatible with the American Convention and the Court’s case law. The aim of this work is to analyse whether conventionality control is used in the production of constitutional and infra-constitutional legislation in Brazil and in the jurisprudence of its courts. Commitment to human rights strengthens the state’s international commitment to its citizens and, to this end, measures must be adopted to make domestic laws compatible with international human rights treaties, as a way of providing its citizens with the standards adopted internationally by various states and which most dignify human beings.