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Chapter 6 - When Bolsonaro and the Judges Go Shopping – How Brazil’s Legal Elites Opened the Door for Bolsonaro’s Bad Populism

from II - Courts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2022

By
Alexandre Fleck Soares Brandao
Edited by
Martin Krygier ,
Adam Czarnota  and
Wojciech Sadurski
Martin Krygier
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
Adam Czarnota
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Sydney
Wojciech Sadurski
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Summary

Brazil’s President Bolsonaro has received significant global political and scholarly attention as a threat to liberal democratic values in the context of the rise of far-right bad populism in the world. When it comes to the country’s judiciary, since taking office in 2019, the Brazilian president has turned his political weapons against important legal institutions in the country, such as the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) and the Supreme Court.1 This chapter, however, rather than focus on his administration’s rhetoric or governmental actions, investigates the role played by legal elites in four politically significant cases, some of which even predate his rise to power.

Type
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Anti-Constitutional Populism , pp. 220 - 253
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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