Entity manifesto calls for black minister at STF – 03/07/2023 – Power

Legal entities launch this Wednesday (8) a manifesto for the unprecedented appointment of a black jurist to the STF (Federal Supreme Court). Organizers articulate to publicize the letter at the ceremony for International Women’s Day to be held at the Planalto Palace.

The document states that the representation of the organs of the justice system must mirror the representativeness of the population and that the lack of black women in the composition of the STF scratches the ability to perceive reality.

“Although it has had the presence of women since the year 2000, there is no reason why a black jurist has ever had a seat on the superior court of the Judiciary.”

“At this moment in which we undertake the re-constitutionalization of the country, a unique opportunity emerges to suppress the gap that reveals the low intensity of Brazilian democracy”, says the manifesto.

The text has as signatories the ABJD (Brazilian Association of Jurists for Democracy, the Prerogatives Group, Collective of Defenders and Defenders for Democracy, Association of Public Advocacy for Democracy, National Coalition of Women and other entities.

Lawyer Vera Lúcia Santana Araújo, national executive of the ABJD, states that the absence of black women in the highest levels of the Judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, is extremely serious for the provision of Justice by the State.

“We want to open a dialogue with society that there is no reason why the Federal Supreme Court cannot have at least one black jurist on its staff today. We have a list of very qualified names to present to the President of the Republic, with all the capacity of approval by the Federal Senate”, he says.

Created in 1891, the STF never had a black minister in its composition. Only three black magistrates were part of the court, the last of which was Minister Joaquim Barbosa, who retired in 2014.

Last week, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) said that “everyone would understand” if he nominated his lawyer, Cristiano Zanin, for the vacancy that will open with the retirement of Minister Ricardo Lewandowski, in May, when he will turn 75. years old.

Read the manifesto in full:

FEDERAL COURT OF JUSTICE

The historical construction of Brazil registers recurrent interruptions in the formation of its democratic identity, highlighting a strong authoritarian trait that refers to the most long-lasting enslavement in the Americas, whose authoritarianism is intrinsic to the most radical system of human exploitation.

From this perspective, the last decade is already marked by a profound democratic deficit —an impeachment process without committing a crime of responsibility took the form of a political coup against President Dilma Rousseff, culminating in the arrest and banishment of former President Lula from political life through a falsified judicial process, unmasked only after the project’s electoral success politically detached from the constitutional framework democratically consecrated by the Federal Constitution of 1988.

Yes, in addition to proclaiming the Federative Republic in a Democratic State of Law, the Preamble of the citizen Constitution states that Brazil is “…destined to ensure the exercise of social and individual rights, freedom, security, well-being , development, equality and justice as supreme values ​​of a fraternal, pluralistic and unprejudiced society, founded on social harmony and committed, in the internal and international order, to the peaceful solution of controversies…”.

Thirty-three years after the 1988 Charter was in force, we can assert that the country’s primary mission is far from being achieved; the levels of social inequalities impose the conclusion that political agents have not adjusted to the constitutional precepts in the achievement of developmental macropolicies, feeding back a country that is absolutely perverse with its people and that maintains institutions of the justice system that contribute greatly to the reiteration of iniquities and that prevent the exercise of citizenship, respect for human dignity, as a founding principle of the Republic, of 56% of the Brazilian population who are black, according to the IBGE.

At the same time, in the light of the international order to which Brazil is committed, we cite the last document signed in 2022, when promulgating the Inter-American Convention against Racism, Racial Discrimination and Related Forms of Intolerance, in addition to the programmatic commitments with the Objectives of Social Development, SDG, from which we extract Goal 16: “Peace, justice and effective institutions: promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels” .

Although the norms of domestic and international law are cogent, the actions already brought prove insufficient and incapable of achieving equity in access to opportunities, especially when it comes to the occupation of spaces of power in the legislative, executive and judicial spheres, gaining even more dimensions of exclusion when the discriminatory intersection articulates the categories of race and gender, demonstrating persistent and even systematic exclusion of women in the sharing and management of powers.

Regarding the justice system that we seek, raising the qualification of the State’s jurisdictional provision based on access by the jurisdictional parties, the composition of the bodies must also be in line with the representativeness of the population, or in other words, it is necessary to have the maximum mirroring of the human diversities that are the people of the Nation that we want to build.

Among the absences that scratch the ability to perceive the reality placed for state legal appreciation, the effective ban on black women from occupying a vacancy on the Federal Supreme Court stands out. Although women have been present since 2000, there is no reason why a black jurist has never sat on the Superior Court of the Judiciary. At this moment in which we undertake the re-constitutionalization of the country, a unique opportunity emerges to suppress the gap that reveals the low intensity of Brazilian democracy.

In the certainty that the legal action of black women allows the offer of a role that brings together the constitutional attributes and the social legitimacy that must be collated by the President of the Republic to take his nomination to the Federal Senate, the subscribing entities support the pertinence of the nomination of black jurists to occupy a ministerial position in the Federal Supreme Court!