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.