The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness and the Right to Access Medical Treatment: Recent Developments in Brazilian Jurisprudence

Derived from North American regulation, the pursuit of happiness has been incorporated in Brazilian legislation through the interpretation of the fundamental rights that are included in the 1988 Constitution. In 2012, the General Assembly of the United Nations declared the 20th March as International Happiness Day (Resolution 66/281), highlighting an international concern for happiness. This research aims to describe the evolution of the application of the pursuit of happiness in the Brazilian law, through academic writings, on the basis of webometrics and jurisprudential research. The paper highlights the lack of academic articles on the subject and the use of the pursuit of happiness that was initially restricted to family law, but as observed through the jurisprudence analysis from São Paulo state, the use of the pursuit of happiness on cases concerning medical care has been increasing since 2015. Although there are few scholars that study the pursuit of happiness in Brazil, most of them understand and the jurisprudence confirms that the pursuit of happiness is an extension of the dignity of the human person principle, and it can be incorporated by the interpretation of that principle. Thereby, we noticed that the pursuit of happiness as a human right has had a major importance on health policies, mostly for helping people to have access to new treatments. In several cases, the petitioner got the right to receive an experimental cancer treatment drug for free, not granted by the government. But final decisions so far defined the state cannot be forced to deliver any drug that could possibly harm citizens’ health also as way to protect their human dignity.