Rights education and Public Defender’s Office of Federal District

thoughts about “conhecer direito” project

Abstract

The research subjects of the right of access to Justice goes far beyond it`s legal scope, since giving access also means to educate the citizens about their rights and not just about providing legal assistance. That being so, this research aims to evaluate the importance of understanding the right from a perspective given by the intern system of the Public Defender’s Office of the Federal District. In order to do so, the theoretical study focused on the waves of access to justice, primarly the ones presented by Mauro Cappelletti and Bryant Garth and also about the fourth wave developed by Kim Economides. To fulfill those objectives case research was promoted centered into the project “Conhecer Direito”, a Public Defender’s Office project that provides rights education for students of the public educational system of the Federal District. Under those circunstances, aiming to perform an empirical evaluation, field researchs were conducted through the analysis of interviews and a form answered by students from the public-school network of the Federal District in the interest of analyzing if the rights education represents an appropriate way of social empowerment. In conclusion, the result obtained revealed that the rights education can provide citizenship and the social and educational development for the individuals.