Justice and politics: some appointments about judicial autonomy and the problematic of the growing power of judges in Italy, France and Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the process of judicial autonomy in Italy, France and Brazil in order to draw comparative considerations and to understand how this process influences the increase in the power of judges and their relationship with the political field. The reflection about the Brazilian context, in contrast to the French context, this work problematizes the autonomy of the judiciary and constructs as hypothesis or central thesis the fact that this autonomy has developed more in function of the singular judge, than of the system of justice. In order to arrive at this central hypothesis, it was adopted as a methodology the bibliographical revision of literature that dealt with the conditions that allowed the differentiation of the legal field and consequent autonomy of the judiciary, besides literature on the diversification of the social composition of the judiciary and how this influenced in political autonomy in contrast with the executive or in the phenomenon of the judicialization of politics. This whole process of reflection was mainly based on the teachings of Werneck Vianna and Garapon for whom the valorization of the judge's figure constitutes a response to the disqualification of politics and, in Brazil, rather than provoking its judicialization, led to the corrosion of the judiciary as a "new public arena" capable of mobilizing plural interpreters of the constitution and safeguarding rights of political and social minorities.