Magistrates, the Military and Politicians: The Construction of Brazilian Judicial Protagonism from Dictatorship to Democracy (1965-1988)

Abstract

This paper reconstructs the history of the expansion of judicial protagonism in the Brazilian public sphere from dictatorship to democracy, focusing on the magistrates’ own actions in judicial reforms (1965-1988). Employing historical methodology, together with models of behavior that consider the Judiciary’s labor market, it categorizes three types of protagonism in contention within the Judiciary − bureaucratic, summit, and grassroots − and traces the journey of each stream. This journey led to an accommodation with the military regime (1965-1977), a break with the dictatorship (1977-1979), and the development of an independent constituent project (1979-1988). It concludes by demonstrating the magistrates’ actions in favor of expanding the Judiciary’s protagonism and the persistent, latent internal conflicts that constitute this Power.

Keywords
Judiciary; Authoritarianism; Judicial Reforms; Military Dictatorship