This book investigates the use of foreign precedent by the Constitutional Court. The formulation of a unifying theory of law around the national implementation of human rights by the Brazilian Judiciary, especially by the Supreme Federal Court, is a condition for promoting the fulfillment of the State's duty to ensure and preserve the effectiveness of protective and diffusive clauses of human rights, as well as to consolidate a legal culture oriented to the effective guarantee of these rights. From a functional and normative perspective, it lists criteria for the structuring of a theory that identifies the existence of a constitutional right with a written material content among countries that are members of international and supranational legal systems for the protection and promotion of human rights and, based on the evolution of its interpretative jurisprudence, of a material unwritten constitutional right. (cover: (c) Felipe Sampaio / STF/SCO).