PRISCILA CAMAZANO, ANA GABRIELA OLIVEIRA LIMA AND GÉSSICA BRANDINO
SÃO PAULO, SP (FOLHAPRESS)
President Lula (PT) will increase the imbalance of ideas in the STF (Supreme Federal Court) if he nominates a man for Rosa Weber’s vacancy.
The minister will reach the age limit of 75 and retire at the end of this month. Everything indicates that Lula will choose another man, with ministers Flávio Dino (Justice) and Jorge Messias (AGU) as favorites. As a result, the court will only have 1 woman, Cármen Lúcia, among the 11 ministers.
This Monday (25), the PT member said he is in no rush to choose Rosa’s successor and stated that gender and color will not be criteria.
Experts interviewed by Folha point out that the female presence in the Supreme Court is fundamental to guaranteeing the plurality of ideas and enforcing the democratic precepts described in the Constitution.
Professor Nina Ranieri, from the USP Law School, states that defending the presence of women adds quality and makes decisions that will affect everyone’s lives more equitable, which is not recognized in the nomination process.
“The resistance that democratic countries have to increasing female participation, be it in the supreme court, in parliaments, in various other places, is impressive,” he says.
For her, if he does not nominate a woman, Lula will show that he does not consider gender an important factor. “This is very revealing of a conception of society.”
The male and white predominance has been a hallmark of PT nominations, responsible for 7 ministers in the current composition.
Of the 9 choices he made in his three terms, including Cristiano Zanin, in the first half of this year, Lula nominated only 1 woman, Cármen Lúcia, the second to join the court, and a black man, Joaquim Barbosa.
During Dilma Rousseff’s government, there were 5 nominations and 1 chosen, Rosa Weber, keeping a woman in the chair of Ellen Gracie, the first minister of the court, appointed in 2000 by Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Chiara Ramos, a doctoral candidate in legal-political sciences at the University of Lisbon and president of the racial equity NGO Abayomi Juristas Negras, states that there is a consensus in legal theory that it is not possible to remove biases from judges. Therefore, it is important that members of a collegial body like the Supreme Court are as diverse as possible.
“It is much more than a question of reparation and representation. It is an imperative need for a legal system whose mission is to achieve justice and social pacification”, he says, highlighting that plurality is one of the fundamental principles of the Constitution and that it is central fulfill this commitment in the highest court in the country.
Flávia Biroli, political scientist and professor at UnB (University of Brasília), states that women make up more than half of law students and that there are women with sufficient technical training to occupy these leadership positions.
“What justifies having a large male majority in the courts?” he says, comparing the situation to political appointments. “We are talking about an environment that, throughout history, has had a male majority, and male control of these spaces will be reproduced.”
To break the cycle, Biroli states that it is necessary to make power networks more plural with more women in leadership spaces.
Professor Luciana Ramos, of Constitutional Law at FGV, argues that the diversity of judges contributes to enforcing constitutional objectives, in addition to being relevant from a symbolic aspect.
“Having diverse perspectives within a collegiate environment like the STF is extremely important because it helps to live up to one of the objectives of the Republic, which is the reduction of inequalities, set out in the third article of the Constitution”, he states.
“Women have different opinions, but there are more chances of changes in decision-making if they are more present, as they have another perspective on topics such as pregnancy”, he explains.
In addition to the gender perspective, there are experts and movements that defend the unprecedented appointment of a black woman to the court.
“The political tradition of black women is fundamentally progressive. There are different examples of this, but they are almost residual”, says Gabrielle Abreu, one of the coordinators of the MND (Black Women Decide) movement.
“Having a progressive black woman in this space is a message to society that Brazilian justice can be a path of transformation and change,” he adds.
The MND defends the names of prosecutor Lívia Sant’Anna Vaz, federal judge Adriana Cruz and lawyer Soraia Mendes for Rosa Weber’s vacancy. According to Abreu, the list reached Lula’s interlocutors, who did not comment on the topic.
Experts consider that, although female nomination does not guarantee a sensitive approach to problems that affect women differently, excluding them normalizes male bias.
CNJ (National Council of Justice) standards on gender and women’s human rights were mapped by the study “Gender and Human Rights in the Brazilian Judiciary”, by Enfam (National School for Training and Improvement of Magistrates).
During Cármen Lúcia’s administration, initiatives were promoted that helped to create the judicial policy to combat domestic violence and the policy to encourage female participation in the Judiciary was approved.
Under Rosa Weber, the CNJ approved a protocol for the adoption of a gender perspective in trials and the racial equity policy, among other standards.
Professor Fabiana Severi, from the Faculty of Law at USP in Ribeirão Preto, also cites the work of former minister Ellen Gracie, who, when presiding over the STF, when the Maria da Penha Law was enacted, established strategic actions so that the courts and judicial units of competence for domestic violence were implemented in all state courts.
Another example is lawyer Deborah Duprat, she says, remembering that in 2009, she was Attorney General of the Republic for 22 days, and, during that period, she unpacked and filed lawsuits.
“One of them was the action on the abortion of anencephalic patients. She filed a lawsuit on the marijuana march, land grabbing in the Amazon, recognizing that the regulation of some areas impacted the rights of indigenous populations. She was also responsible for the action that guaranteed the union between homosexuals”, says Severi.
Before ending her mandate, the judge guided the CNJ to judge a policy of alternating gender in filling vacancies for the second instance of the Judiciary and released the action that deals with the decriminalization of abortion, for which she is the rapporteur, for analysis by the STF.
Rosa voted in favor of decriminalizing abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The action began to be judged virtually on the 22nd, but a prominent request presented by minister Luís Roberto Barroso sent the action to the physical plenary, with no date yet defined.
The post Lula will increase the imbalance of ideas in the STF by nominating a man for Rosa’s vacancy appeared first in Jornal de Brasília.
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