Institutionalisation, Reform and Independence of the Public Defender’s Office in Brazil

Madeira, Lígia Mori

doi:10.1590/1981-38212014000100011

Cited by 21 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(20 reference statements)

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“…Autonomous PDOs also enjoy protections afforded by organic laws, maintenance funds, and higher councils. In the absence of a constitutional mandate, states resisted the adoption of these attributes (Madeira, 2014).…”

Section: Critical Junctures Path Dependency and Brazil’s Pdomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The consequences of this reform are clear. In 2004, only 18 per cent of existing offices ranked as fully autonomous, but five years later over 40 per cent of them ranked as such (Madeira, 2014). This second major reform also triggered legislative outputs and court decisions that reinforced the commitment to the building of autonomous PDOs across the territory.…”

Section: Critical Junctures Path Dependency and Brazil’s Pdomentioning

confidence: 99%

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Access to Justice and the Legal Complex: Building a Public Defenders’ Office in Brazil

Nunes

2020

Journal of Politics in Latin America

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Latin American democracies have developed institutions to empower citizens against the state. This article brings attention to an often overlooked, but key, actor in these processes: the legal complex. I argue that the content of reforms designed to strengthen the rule of law partially reflects the interests of politically influential collective legal actors. Political influence is defined as a function of alliances with civil society and embeddedness within decision-making arenas of the state. To develop this argument, the article analyses the slow building of Brazil’s Public Defenders’ Office (PDO). I argue that the office’s initial institutional weakness resulted from defenders’ fragile political position relative to that of prosecutors and the bar during Brazil’s constitutional transition. Its eventual strengthening sixteen years later resulted from changes to the legal complex alliance in its favour, the formation of connections between defenders and civil society, and increased PDO access to policymaking spaces.

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Section: Critical Junctures Path Dependency and Brazil’s Pdomentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Critical Junctures Path Dependency and Brazil’s Pdomentioning

confidence: 99%

Access to Justice and the Legal Complex: Building a Public Defenders’ Office in Brazil

Nunes

2020

Journal of Politics in Latin America

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“…Levels of local poverty and litigiousness did not correlate with defenders' supply (Smulovitz ). Another valuable contribution along these lines is Madeira's (), analyzing the gap between formal achievements of independence of Brazilian states' defenders' offices and “what actually occurs.”…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Different Ways of Losing: Public Defenders (and Private Counsel) at the Supreme Court of Argentina

González‐Bertomeu¹

2020

Law Soc Rev

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Though most countries have established public defense systems to represent indigent defendants, this is far from implying their offices are in good shape. Indeed, significant variation likely exists in the systems' effectiveness, across societies and at the subnational level. Defense agencies' performance likely depends on their configuration, including their funding, their internal arrangements, and their selection and retention mechanisms. Centered on public defense in Argentina, this article compares the performance of public and retained counsel at the country's Supreme Court. Public defenders' offices received a boost in the last two decades, and are institutionally well positioned to square off against prosecutors, putting them at least on par with the averaged retained counsel. Using a fresh dataset of around 3000 appeal decisions from 2008 to 2013, the study largely tests representational capabilities by looking at whether counsel meets briefs' formal requirements, a subset of decisions particularly valuable to reduce potential biases. It finds that formal dismissals are significantly less frequent when a public defender is named in an appeal, particularly when a federal defender is involved. It also discusses and tests alternative mechanisms. The article's findings illuminate discussions of support structures for litigation, criminal justice reform, and criminal defendants' rights.

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“…Em nível subnacional, o quadro é desigual. Enquanto alguns estados já possuíam defensoria antes mesmo da última Constituição, outros a estabeleceram logo após a sua promulgação e outros apenas na década de 2010 (Moura et al, 2013;Madeira, 2014). Finalmente, inspirada na experiência do início dos anos 1980 com os Juizados de Pequenas Causas, a Constituição demandou o estabelecimento de Juizados Especiais Civis e Criminais.…”

Section: Três Décadas De Reformasunclassified

Juízes eficientes, judiciário ineficiente no Brasil pós-1988

Ros¹,

Taylor²

2019

BIB

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O artigo realiza uma análise descritiva ampla das continuidades e mudanças do poder judiciário ao longo das últimas três décadas no Brasil, tendo em vista especialmente a sua eficiência e eficácia no cumprimento de sua missão institucional, ou seja, a resolução pacífica de conflitos por meio da interpretação obrigatória da legislação. Valendo-se de revisão de literatura e de dados tanto primários como secundários, o artigo salienta, por um lado, a existência de um aparente descompasso entre magistrados de alta produtividade decisória e, por outro, um poder judiciário de baixa resolutividade no Brasil. Esse cenário, por sua vez, origina-se de um sistema judicial marcado por imensa redundância decisória, a qual foi objeto de reforma apenas ocasionalmente ao longo do período estudado, em que pese o elevado volume de reformas realizadas ao longo das últimas décadas.

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Institutionalisation, Reform and Independence of the Public Defender’s Office in Brazil

Cited by 21 publications

References 16 publications

Access to Justice and the Legal Complex: Building a Public Defenders’ Office in Brazil

Access to Justice and the Legal Complex: Building a Public Defenders’ Office in Brazil

Different Ways of Losing: Public Defenders (and Private Counsel) at the Supreme Court of Argentina

Juízes eficientes, judiciário ineficiente no Brasil pós-1988

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