Brazil's Supreme Court within the context of the erosion of democracy and democratic resistance

• Grant number: 23/12533-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: February 03, 2025
• End date: May 02, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Fabiana Luci de Oliveira
• Grantee: Fabiana Luci de Oliveira
• Host Investigator: Ann Southworth
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine), United States
• Associated research grant: 21/12714-4 - Legal professionals and democracy: local-global strugles to reshape professional forces in the judicial and public safety systems, AP.TEM

Abstract

The scholarship proposal abroad is linked to research that deals with Brazil's Supreme Court (STF) relationship with politics and democracy in Brazil, in the period of 2019-2022, developed within the scope of the thematic project financed by FAPESP, whose general objective is to understand the relationship between legal professions and politics in Brazil, based on the image of a "tug of war" between democratic and anti-democratic positions, seeking to understand the different meanings that these tensions can acquire on the borders between legal professions and politics. The research I carry out seeks to understand how the STF positioned itself in this "tug of war", investigating whether and how the Court can be a vector of democratic setback or a barrier to contain this process, mapping the use of formal and informal mechanisms of influence, connecting internal and external conservative groups to justice institutions. The three-month period abroad will allow us to investigate whether formal and informal mechanisms of influence were also used in the US Supreme Court during the Trump administration (2017-2020), involving interviews with experts; the survey of journalistic materials and the review of relevant literature on the discussion of the North American Supreme Court as a vector of democratic setback or a barrier to contain this process. In this sense, the activities will also contribute to the broader discussion of the thematic project about the flows of ideas in the USA-Brazil axis.