State and Constitutionalism - Jaime Leonidas Miranda Alves - Bog

The first task in understanding the questions that drive this work is to understand what the state is. Conceptualizing the state is a laborious activity that even today finds dissent in the most advanced doctrine. Thus, it is imperative to emphasize that the state must be seen as a means, and not as an end in itself, built to regulate life in society. According to the illustrious professor Dalmo de Abreu Dallari, the difficulty encountered by the doctrine in conceptualizing the state lies in the very complexity of the object of study: there are various points of view from which it is fully possible to analyze and try to trace the ontic nature of the state, which fatally leads to the impossibility of constructing a concept that satisfies all the scholars who turn their work to the analysis of the state. The first attempt to scientifically conceptualize the state that we can remember dates back to Germany with Gerber, who defended the thesis of the state as a legal person. After Gerber, various theories emerged seeking to conceptualize the state. In this sense, it is imperative to analyze the concepts of the STATE and its relationship with CONSTITUTIONALISM.