Below is a statement written by Spring 2022 visiting scholars, Cecília Pazinato Marcon and Maria Fernanda Marques.
During our time as virtual visiting scholars, we had the opportunity to learn more about Professor Fineman’s Vulnerability Theory, and together with our study group in Brazil concerning the Theory, we realized how important the Theory could be to analyze several issues in the Brazilian legal system. There are social, economic, and political rights protected and guaranteed in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, and there is already a debate concerning this idea of a responsive state, so we thought Vulnerability Theory would be a great contribution to that debate, to expand it beyond the field of constitutional law.
Our study group in Brazil is currently made up of four people: Fabrízia Serafim, who recently completed her Ph.D. at Emory; Fábio Braga, a Ph.D. student at UFPR in Brazil; Cecília Marcon and Maria Fernanda, both undergraduate students of Law at PUCPR and UNEB in Brazil as well.
We have translated to Portuguese one of the very first articles of Prof. Fineman concerning Vulnerability Theory, “The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human Condition.” We are currently working on our following translation: “Reasoning from the Body: Universal Vulnerability and Social Justice.” And we intend to continue translating other articles so that more people from Portuguese-speaking countries can get in touch with the Theory. We also have plans to expand and formalize our group.