{"id":33104,"date":"2013-08-24T17:27:35","date_gmt":"2013-08-24T17:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=33104"},"modified":"2013-08-24T17:29:38","modified_gmt":"2013-08-24T17:29:38","slug":"a-blunt-chief-justice-unafraid-to-upset-brazil%e2%80%99s-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=33104","title":{"rendered":"A Blunt Chief Justice Unafraid to Upset Brazil\u2019s Status"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Blunt Chief Justice Unafraid to Upset Brazil\u2019s Status<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2013-08-23<\/p>\n

Simon Romero<\/a><\/strong>, Brazil Bureau Chief<\/p>\n

BRAS\u00cdLIA<\/a> \u2014 Brazil\u2019s highest court has long viewed itself as a bastion of manners and formality. Justices call one another \u201cYour Excellency,\u201d dress in billowing robes and wrap each utterance in grandiloquence, as if little had changed from the era when marquises and dukes held sway from their vast plantations.<\/p>\n

But when the chief justice, Joaquim Barbosa<\/a>, strides into the court, the other 10 excellencies brace themselves for whatever may come next.<\/p>\n

In one televised feud, Mr. Barbosa questioned another justice about whether he would even be on the court had he not been appointed by his cousin, a former president impeached in 1992. With another justice, Mr. Barbosa rebuked him over what the chief justice considered his condescending tone, telling him he was not his \u201ccapanga,\u201d a term describing a hired thug.<\/p>\n

In one of his most scathing comments, Mr. Barbosa, the high court\u2019s first and only black justice, took on the entire legal system of Brazil \u2014 where it is still remarkably rare for politicians to ever spend time in prison, even after being convicted of crimes \u2014 contending that the mentality of judges was \u201cconservative, pro-status-quo and pro-impunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a temperament that doesn\u2019t adapt well to politics,\u201d Mr. Barbosa, 58, said in a recent interview in his quarters here in the Supreme Federal Tribunal<\/a>, a modernist landmark designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s because I speak my mind so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

His acknowledged lack of tact notwithstanding, he is the driving force behind a series of socially liberal and establishment-shaking rulings, turning Brazil\u2019s highest court \u2014 and him in particular \u2014 into a newfound political power and the subject of popular fascination.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s recent rulings include a unanimous decision upholding the University of Bras\u00edlia\u2019s admissions policies aimed at increasing the number of black and indigenous students, opening the way for one of the Western Hemisphere\u2019s most sweeping affirmative action laws for higher education…<\/p>\n

…In a country where a majority of people now define themselves as black or of mixed race \u2014 but where blacks remain remarkably rare in the highest echelons of political institutions and corporations<\/strong> \u2014 Mr. Barbosa\u2019s trajectory and abrupt manner have elicited both widespread admiration and a fair amount of resistance.<\/p>\n

As a teenager, Mr. Barbosa moved to the capital, Bras\u00edlia, finding work as a janitor in a courtroom. Against the odds, he got into the University of Bras\u00edlia, the only black student in its law program at the time<\/strong>. Wanting to see the world, he later won admission into Brazil\u2019s diplomatic service, which promptly sent him to Helsinki<\/a>, the Finnish capital on the shore of the Baltic Sea.<\/p>\n

Sensing that he would not advance much in the diplomatic service, which he has called \u201cone of the most discriminatory institutions of Brazil,\u201d Mr. Barbosa opted for a career as a prosecutor. He alternated between legal investigations in Brazil and studies abroad, gaining fluency in English, French and German, and earning a doctorate in law at Pantheon-Assas University in Paris…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Blunt Chief Justice Unafraid to Upset Brazil\u2019s Status The New York Times 2013-08-23 Simon Romero, Brazil Bureau Chief BRAS\u00cdLIA \u2014 Brazil\u2019s highest court has long viewed itself as a bastion of manners and formality. Justices call one another \u201cYour Excellency,\u201d dress in billowing robes and wrap each utterance in grandiloquence, as if little had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,83,21,1467,8,394],"tags":[12407,15534,2640,11707,2327],"class_list":["post-33104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-law","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-joaquim-barbosa","tag-joaquim-benedito-barbosa-gomes","tag-new-york-times","tag-simon-romero","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}