Rescue how different Brazilian theorists addressed issues such as the relationship between the executive and the legislature, the federalism and the role of the judiciary of Brazil. This was the purpose of teachers Rubens Glezer, Christian Lynch and Oscar Vilhena with the book “Brazilian Constitutional Theory: 200 years of disputes”.
Starting from the diagnosis that the national authors who have leaned on the subject are little studied, although Brazil is in their seventh constitution, they invited experts in the history of law to dive into these issues that still challenge the national political scenario.
Published at the end of last year, the book will have a launch event this Thursday (15) in downtown São Paulo.
The first Brazilian constitutional letter was granted by, in 1824, and established a constitutional monarchy. Decades later, the following Constitution was approved after, in 1891. The 20th century, in turn, saw a more numerous edition of new constitutions: in 1934, 1937, 1946, 1967 and, finally, in 1988 – the remaining way.
“The book does not bring a story of facts, it is not a history of documents. It is a history of problems,” says Lynch, who is an associate professor at the Institute of Social and Political Studies of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (IESP-Uerj).
He criticizes what he sees as a kind of viralism in the treatment relegated to national theorists and that one of the challenges of the book was to seek to conceptualize what a Brazilian constitutional theory would be.
“Speak more of, and” is the title of one of the book chapters, referring to theorists considered important in this two centuries of debates.
For FGV Professor Law Oscar Vilhena, who is also a columnist for Sheetthe most revealing point, throughout the process of elaborating the book, was to understand to what extent the question about federalism in Brazil was already put from the Empire – which in its analysis falls on land some of the diagnoses that narrate the model here later adopted as a kind of “scam” as opposed to the American.
“The family that arises in the process of colonization, in a way, will establish a demand for local power,” he says, referring to the chapter written by Thiago Hansen. “And, to a large extent, [esse familismo] It is being transformed into local political power. And it is the real power within Brazilian society. So it is not artificially created. He was there. It is impossible to think the Brazilian state of a non -federalist perception. “
He considers that the book’s differential was to try to make a broader flight on the arguments that permeated these different themes throughout this period, rather than analyzing them within a specific historical period.
Rubens Glezer, also a professor at FGV Law SP, in turn, says that, from this provocation, the authors involved in the project revisited documents and mapped the most important names – and not always obvious – in the debate of these issues.
For him, the comparison between the experience of the 1946 and 1988 Constitution was enlightened regarding the relationship between the Executive and the Legislature, in a chapter written by Claudia Paiva Carvalho and Maria Pia Guerra.
He estimates that, from the debate waged by Afonso Arinos and Raul Pilla on parliamentarism and presidentialism, for example, along with later diagnoses on the subject, the importance of an empowered Federal Supreme Court is understood, as the text currently predicted.
“We had seven constitutions that had variation of institutional design, which tried different models and answers to try to deal with different political, social, economic, and generally we did not access this wealth of social and institutional experiences to think about the contemporary scenario,” says Glezer.
The face -to -face event, with debate between the organizers and autograph session, will be this Thursday, at 18h, at the Martins Fontes Consolação Bookstore (R. Dr. Vila Nova, 309).
