Law and Society in Brazil at the Crossroads: A Review

Abstract

This article presents a general overview of Brazilian sociolegal studies. After presenting a short historical narrative of the field in Brazil, we argue that the early years of intense teaching of legal sociology had a politically committed approach, which gave rise to growing criticism of Brazilian legal scholarship that in turn affected the self-image of law professors. Different theoretical strands appeared in the years that followed, and some specific fields of research gained importance, particularly those concerning a sociology of the legal profession, the administration of courts, and law schools. However, we contend that as time went by, many sociolegal scholars began to neglect the critical approach to law, and today most of them fail to confront critical aspects of the gap between law on the books and law in action, especially when that gap affects lower classes or stigmatized populations. 91 Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci. 2014.10:91-103. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Access provided by RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE on 02/05/15. For personal use only.

The Impact of Adjacent Laws on Implementing Violence Against Women Laws: Legal Violence in the Lives of Costa Rican Women

“…These studies considered legal effectiveness, impact, and conditions under which outcomes occurred, and their analysis often ended with calls for legal reform (Gould and Barclay 2012). This scholarship extended beyond the United States; for example, Brazilian legal scholars explored similar legal gaps and explained them as resulting from the artificiality in liberal institutions in Brazil (Lima Lopes and Freitas Filho 2014). In the 1980s, the methodologies used in this research, the applicability of cases examined, and the failure to situate these “gap studies” within larger structures and norms were criticized (Gould and Barclay 2012); however, subsequent work addressed some of these criticisms, see for example, Silbey (2005), who examines how these gaps reveal power relationships.…”

Brazil and the field of socio-legal studies: Globalization, the Hegemony of the US, the Place of Law, and Elite Reproduction

“…Part Two. Brazil A recent article which seeks to summarize the role of socio-legal research in Brazil for a U.S. audience cites three strands of legal sociology (Lopes & Freitas Filho, 2014). One difference from the U.S., according to the authors, is that the researchers in legal sociology in Brazil mostly "do not rely on firsthand social inquiry."…”

“…They explicitly contrast the research associated with the Rede de Pesquisa Empírica em Direito with earlier empirical researchers who focused on the "problem of the overall injustice of Brazilian society." (Lopes & Freitas Filho, 2014). This criticism suggests that some of the issues involving "science versus justice" in the United States also play out in Brazilian debates.…”

“…Finally, there is also some evidence in Brazil of the larger criticism that the focus on rights and access may be limiting, and that "institutional changes made during the 1980s and 1990s have modified the traditional low profile of legal professionals, not only helping them to gain more visibility, but also negatively affecting the role of political institutions as loci of public debates" (Lopes & Freitas Filho, 2014). This is the argument that legalization is not always progressive --that it may promote too much of a reliance on litigation and rights discourses rather than confronting the issues through robust debates about the use of state power.…”