Brazilian judicial aristocracy: Privileges, habitus and structural complicity

Abstract

In the field of sociology of elites, the aim here is to understand how and why the judicial system in Brazil reproduces aristocratic and elitist features in its structures, which seem incompatible with the discourses that compose their own theoretical justifications and with the democratic principles governing their functions. Magistrates in Brazil have established themselves as a special group that holds an exclusive socio-political space through a series of characteristics and dispositions that compose their specific habitus, which produces reflexes in the legal field in which they act. They distinguish themselves from others that have careers in public offices, and radically from ordinary citizens. In order to understand this scenario, this article proposes a critical analysis of the structural contradictions of the judicial system, especially of the historic perpetuation of privileges, the dynamics of its career admission and progression, and the high salaries paid to magistrates. Considering those distortions, the consequence is that judges, by sharing an exclusive space of socialization with the economic and politic elites, are radically casted apart from the rest of the people, allowing a judicial practice that tends to preserve the established relations of power.