Visa o artigo à análise do impeachment em sua posição de mecanismo de controle institucional de agentes políticos, a partir da busca por suas bases teórico-históricas oriundas do common law. O enfrentamento do problema da definição da(s) natureza(s) do impeachment objetivou, em primeiro lugar, situar a questão da responsabilidade na abrangência teórica da democracia representativa, face às falhas que lhe são imanentes com relação a desvios de expectativas e abusos de poder. Ao identificar distinções estruturais entre as responsabilidades política (accountability) e jurídica, configurou-se adequado resgatar historicamente o requisito da violação de lei nos precedentes atenienses clássicos (eisangeliai). As mutações sequenciais vinculadas ao impeachment perpassaram as fases de: a) estabelecimento de parâmetros procedimentais (primeiros casos); b) exigência do critério de juridicidade (período Stuart); c) busca por especificação das hipóteses de cabimento (EUA); d) fixação de tipos legais precisos de violação (Brasil). Sob o prisma histórico-comparado, evidenciou-se nítido o crivo de juridicidade qualificada adotado no primeiro modelo normativo do impeachment presidencial brasileiro (1891-1892).
This paper seeks to analyze impeachment as a mechanism of institutional control of political actors, searching for its historical and theoretical bases in common law, so as to uncover the sources of the Brazilian originalist model. The Brazilian model deserves special attention due to its highly distinct, descriptive constitutional hypotheses. Before attempting to define the nature of impeachment, the main objective was to place the general idea of responsibility within the theoretical scope of representative democracy, accounting for potential failures resulting in frustration of expectations of constituencies and/or abuse of power by representatives. While identifying structural distinctions between political accountability and legal responsibility, it was appropriate to bring forth the requirement of legal violation in classical Athenian precedents (eisangeliai). In the end, this analysis goes over historical mutations of the impeachment mechanism: a) establishment of procedural parameters (British first cases); b) inceptive prerequisite of legal violation (Stuart period); c) attemptable specification of appropriate legal hypotheses (US); d) constitutional provision of precise categories of legal violation (Brazil).
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