Constitutional judges (guarantee of the Constitution and responsibility)

My aim in this paper is to propose a reflection on the position and the importance that the constitutional judge has in the legal systems of contemporary constitutionalism. The figure of the judge responsible of protecting the Constitution is a key institution, without which we cannot understand the laws of constitutional democracies, their current lines of development, and the guarantee of rights and freedoms that constitute the normative core of these systems. Moreover, the reflection on the exercise of the powers of the judge, its scope and its justification is an important part of contemporary legal discussion, still relevant, albeit not exclusively - in the field of legal philosophy. The object of attention of my reflection is the judge who has the power of judicial review, in a scheme of defense of the Constitution, regardless the specific ways of this defense.

Redes institucionais de apoio ao desenvolvimento territorial: estudo de caso a partir da análise da dinâmica territorial do desenvolvimento de um âmbito espacial periférico (Sarandi/RS/Brasil)

Different studies has aimed the understanding of the causes that lead some cities, regions or territories to develop themselves, whereas others remain stagnant or get back. One starts from the presupposed that the development results from the standard of social territorial organization, this one capable to provoke collective territorial innovations, as a result of the institucional density, that is, from the local capacity to constitute relations in chain. The present análisis is centered in the municipality of Sarandi/RS/ Brasil, that from the nineties has enterprised a trajectory of uncomum development. From a serious situation of social economical crisis in the previous decades, its social economical and institutional actors, in a way of chain, were capable to reason a collection of initiatives that resulted in the structure of a microcluster in the department of clothes industry, counting today around 50 companies and the institutions of support minimally necessaries.

A urbanização e os desafios conceituais do ecossistema: uma contribuição à aplicabilidade do desenvolvimento sustentável para o município de Criciúma, Santa Catarina, Brasil

Problemas urbanos interconectados e relacionados ao meio ambiente, à sociedade e à economiarefletem o contexto de complexidade urbana inerente à crise da modernidade. Levam-se esforços eimaginação aos desafios conceituais do ecossistema urbano e buscam-se práticas que reconstituamo ambiente para suportar a degeneração socioambiental evocando a sustentabilidade. Contribuiçõesteóricas e concepções cientifícas apontam para práticas sustentáveis e enfatizam a importância dosprincípios sistêmicos para a gestão e o planejamento sustentável das cidades. A complexidade deMorin e a interconexão de Capra encontram eco nas propostas práticas de Newman e Jennings, Register e Roger, que tratam a cidade como sistema ecológico e nas de Rueda e de Odum, quepropõem adaptar a cidade aos moldes da natureza. Valores teóricos e práticos se desdobram emestrategias aplicáveis ao desenvolvimento sustentável para o município de Criciúma, Santa Catarina,Brasil, que podem se estender a outros municípios