The history of Brazil from the perspective of criminal and civil law
Brazilian legal codes offer an opportunity to look back on the country's socio-economic trajectory from the days of the empire (1822-1889) to the present. To explore these intersections between law and historical overview, the IEA will conduct the debate ‘Direito, Sociedade e História: Relendo o Brasil a Partir do Direito Penal e do Direito Civil’ (‘Law, Society and History: Rereading Brazil From Criminal Law and Civil Law’) on October 23, at 4 pm.
The purpose of the meeting is to compare the institutional design of Brazilian legislation and the different conjunctures of the economy and social relations in the country in a historical perspective, showing the links between the criminal and civil laws and the context in which they have been created.
As an example of these linkages, jurist Lenio Luiz Streck, exhibitor of the meeting, mentions the cases of the first and second criminal codes of the country, which have been designed to meet the interests of slaveholders and to "catch former slaves". He also mentions the establishment of the right to property, which would have been the result from claims of slavers.
According to the jurist, also professor of the Graduate Program in Law of the Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS) and prosecutor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the civil code has been created for “those who have”, while the criminal code has been created for “those who have not”, this being the institutional configuration that is responsible for the impunity of the Brazilian elite.
The panelists of the meeting will be Fernando Facury Skaff, professor of the Department of Economic, Financial and Tax Law of USP’s School of Law, and José Renato Nalini, judge of the Court of Justice of the State of São Paulo and IEA’s former adviser. The mediation will be in charge of Renato Janine Ribeiro, professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy at USP’s Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences and adviser at the IEA.
The debate will take place in the Amphitheatre Prof. Dr. Luiz Richid Trabulsi of the building ICB III at USP’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences.