Tag: Brazil
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“Constitutional Dismemberment” and Political Crisis in Brazil: Populism in Sight?
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília Jon Elster once wrote that “… the task of constitution-making generally emerges in conditions that are likely to work against good constitution-making.”[1] Passion – as he puts it – prevails over reason in such turbulent circumstances.
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Abusive Judicial Activism and Judicial Independence in Brazil
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília When delivering his speech at the Brazilian Supreme Court on December 5 on “Public Ethics and Democracy,” Michael Sandel, Professor at Harvard University, could not foresee what was about to happen that very day just some floors above the conference room.
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Preservationist Constitutional Amendments and the Rise of Antipolitics in Brazil
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília Ran Hirschl, in his book Towards Juristocracy, raises a very thorough argument on how political, economic, and judicial elites have strategically used Supreme Courts as “a form of self-interested hegemonic preservation.”[1] As a way of keeping many of their interests virtually untouched for years, especially in democratic and pluralistic…
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The Brazilian Constitutional Amendment Rate: A Culture of Change?
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília Tom Ginsburg and James Melton, in their fascinating article “Does the Constitutional Amendment Rule Matter at All? Amendment Cultures and the Challenges of Measuring Amendment Difficulty, raise a powerful argument against the well-worn claim that the number of amendments is directly related to the flexibility of constitutions.[1]
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Is There an Optimal Constitutional Design for Presidential Impeachments?
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília Comparative constitutional law is now faced with a rich debate over the scope, limits, and consequences of impeachment proceedings. Since the Brazilian President Dilma Roussef was temporarily suspended from office and thereby replaced by the acting President Michel Temer after the Senate had voted to begin an impeachment trial…
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Abusive Impeachment? Brazilian Political Turmoil and the Judicialization of Mega-Politics
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília In 2007, Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, an Argentinian professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote that “impeachments are likely when the mass media systematically investigate and expose political scandals and when the president fails to keep tight control over Congress… When a broad social coalition takes the street…
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Why Impeachment? Brazilian Democracy Revisited
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasilia, Brazil Impeachment has become a common word these days. Recently, examples of impeachment proceedings appeared in Madagascar,[1] Thailand,[2] Indonesia,[3] Myanmar,[4] Philippines,[5] and Paraguay.[6] In Latin America, the 1990s and 2000s were clearly marked by an “unprecedented wave of impeachments” proceedings,[7] including in Brazil (1992), Venezuela (1993), Colombia (1996), Paraguay…
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Corporate Campaign Contributions in Brazil: Of Courts, Congresses, and the Agendas of Individual Justices
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasilia Debates over the relationship between Congress and the Judiciary are quite common in the comparative constitutional literature, especially in the current scenario of rising activism of constitutional courts worldwide. Particularly interesting is to observe how Supreme Courts and Parliaments negotiate the pace of their decisions, sometimes in a symbiotic…
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The Mass Protests of March and April 2015 in Brazil: A Continuation of June 2013?
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasilia Last March 15 and April 12, Brazil again became the stage of huge mass protests. Hundreds of thousands of protesters stormed many of the largest cities in the country, bringing back memories of the demonstrations of June 2013 during the FIFA Confederations Cup.
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Brazilian Constitutionalism Moving Backwards? Same-Sex Marriage and the New Conservative Congress
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasilia, Brazil The debate over same-sex marriage is once again in the newspaper headlines. After the US Supreme Court accepted, on February 16, to hear the cases brought by fifteen same-sex couples from four states (Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee), chances are that, finally, a federal judicial ruling in this…