IF ADMINISTRATIVE LAW REMAINS, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW DOES NOT PASS: PROSPECTS OF CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC LAW ON AN OLD QUESTION

This article aims to present contemporary public law perspectives on the relationship between constitutional law and administrative law. It advocates the need to overcome the pendulous relationship of dominance historically established between those disciplines. The text proposes a new paradigm to analyze the relationship between those two fields. This new paradigm is based on the perception that one cannot act alone or can dominate the other. As a consequence, it is argued that this relationship must be seen as a symbiotic one, otherwise there is a risk of producing a constitutional law unable to fulfill its promises and a bureaucracy insensitive to its obligations and commitments within the constitutional system. The Brazilian historical, political and social context is presented in order to demonstrate an urgent need to advance academically with a symbiotic perspective of the relationship between constitutional law and administrative law. In this scenario, two approaches are suggested. The first is an attempt to design a catalogue of constitutional rights able to be effective in bureaucratic practice and, the second, the conduction of normative and empirical studies on the bureaucracy's role as a guarantor of constitutional promises. Finally, the text presents American legal literature called "administrative constitutionalism" in order to inspire future studies on how Public Administration can engage in constitutional interpretation.