the very possibility of dialogue, the foundation of democratic life. The application of this critical hermeneutics to the specific case requires rigour. First, one must resist the temptation to treat each exclusion as an „isolated case“ to be considered in its particular circumstances. The integrity of the law demands recognition of a general principle: establishments open to the public cannot discriminate. Second, the justifications presented – dress code, „establishment profile,“ „private reservation“ – must be read for what they often are: subterfuges for exclusions that dare not speak their name. Third, the court decision must explain its constitutional grounds, not take refuge in abstractions about „reasonableness“ or „proportionality.“ The restaurant thus emerges as a privileged constitutional metaphor. It is a microcosm where the dramas of democracy are played out on a daily basis. The shared table symbolises mutual recognition; the denied table, exclusion from the political community. Every time someone is prevented from sitting where others sit, the violence of segregation is repeated on an intimate scale. It is no coincidence that the great moments of democratic rupture – from the civil rights movement in the United States to the struggle against apartheid – had restaurants as their symbolic stages.31 The critical hermeneutics of access to restaurants therefore rejects both the decisionism that legitimises exclusion and the deliberation that relativises rights. In its place, it proposes a constitutionally sound interpretation: the right of access to spaces of common coexistence is a necessary corollary of dignity and equality. There is no room for discretion when the very possibility of participating in collective life is at stake. The restaurant, read hermeneutically, reveals itself as a space where the Constitution is realised or denied in the most prosaic of gestures: the invitation to the table or the door that closes. Here, the link with the previous chapter is confirmed: if constitutional and international foundations establish the normative horizon, it is through critical hermeneutics that this horizon is converted into concrete practice. and the dialogical structure of understanding, especially when Gadamer treats conversation as a model of hermeneutic experience and the need to „let the other be“ in their otherness. Cf: GADAMER, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method I. 15th ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2015. pp. 472-478; and GADAMER, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method II. 9th ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2013. pp. 242-247, where he discusses the “I-Thou” structure and mutual recognition as a condition for authentic dialogue. 31 SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964). Available at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/379/241/. Accessed on: 6 Sept. 2025. 594 RUI AURÉLIO DE LACERDA BADARÓ
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