One of my Brazilian students in my Prototyping Access to Justice class alerted me to a very cool app in Brazil, all about empowering people about their legal rights.
It’s called Carteirada do Bem. It’s a native app (on Android) and (on ioS) + a website. It is put out by the assembly of Rio di Janeiro.
It is an in-your-pocket tool for a citizen, to know what their legal rights are in a given situation. They can open the app, pick which domain their scenario is in (medical, at work, at a store, etc.). Then they can find the specific situation they’re in, and when they click on that — they get a quick, easy summary of what their rights are, and what ‘magic words’ they can say to assert the law.
Here’s a video of it in action.
And another video explaining it (for you Portugese speakers!).
The name of the app is a play on ‘badge for good’. Just like a police man can flash their badge to assert their legal authority, a person can pull out this app and flash the words and legal citation to assert their rights.
You can save common scenarios, to have them at the ready.
It’s a great model — one that I am exploring replicating for here in the US. Putting the essential law in people’s hands — in easy to use and easy to understand modes. Let me know what you think!
