The Invention of the Mandado de segurança

Note sul Testo
The invention ofthe mandado de segurança in 1934 can be interpreted as the end of a long story or the beginning of a new one. As the result of years of debate, the new institute was perceived as an important constitutional innovation of the time that effectively answered an old promise regarding the need to enforce fundamental rights. But, despite the widespread narrative that surrounded the rise of the mandado de segurança, it also represented the final product of a long tradition of theories and practices of Brazilian public law. In fact, it is a valuable key in understanding the (re)emergence of legal principles and concepts that, at their core, favored the public interest. Therefore, in a period of a significant politicaI, sociaI, economic, and legaI transition, the mandado de segurança is a perfect image of the paradox of the Vargas Era, when protecting rights seemed just as important as (re)building the state.

Gabriel Faustino Santos is a postdoc researcher with a Ph.D. in Legai History from the Università degli studi di Macerata. He has focused on Brazil's institutional and constitutional history, mainly on the period of the First Republic and the Vargas Era.

Indice
Introduction

Part I. The mandado de segurança between innovation and tradition: the discourse of formation of the new guarantee
Chapter 1. The background and the experiments of the First Republic (1889-1930): defining ideas and exploring possible alternatives to the enforcement of rights
1.1. The history before the mandado de segurança: setting our starting point
1.2. Rethinking old experiments: habeas corpus and possessory injunctions as the safest bets
1.3. The special action of Law no. 221 Art. 13, 1894: the story of a planned failure

Chapter 2. The recent origins of the mandado de segurança: the drafts in the political-parliamentary arena
2.1. The mandado de segurança in Parliament: the history of its appearance
2.2. The proto-initiatives of Alberto Torres (1914) and Edmundo Muniz Barreto (1922)
2.3. The Constitutional Amendment of 1926 and the promise of a new legal remedy
2.4. The Gudesteu Pires project and the Afrânio de Mello Franco substitute: discussing the form and nature of the new institute
2.5. The 1934 Constitution and the creation of the mandado de segurança
2.6. Law no. 191, 1936 and the regulation of the mandado de segurança: rewriting the new remedy

Chapter 3. Appropriation of foreign institutes in the formation of the mandado de segurança: a Brazilian reading of the Anglo-American writs and the Mexican juicio de amparo
3.1. Innovation through the lens of foreign law
3.2. The foreign writs and the Brazilian legal thinking: the first echoes of a strategic use
3.3. Edmundo Muniz Barreto’s proposal and the 1926 Constitutional Amendment: foreign law caught between promises and real intentions
3.4. Gudesteu Pires and the remedy “identical to the writ of mandamus in the United States and to Mexico’s recurso de amparo”
3.5. The foreign writs in the creation and regulation of the mandado de segurança
3.6. Foreign institutes in legal thought (I): risks of abuse and limits
3.7. Foreign institutes in legal thought (II): finding the nature and establishing the interpretation of the mandado de segurança

Chapter 4. The remote origins of the mandado de segurança: a strong state and a conditional control of the public administration
4.1. Tradition in Brazilian public law: identifying key elements
4.2. Administrative jurisdiction and the legacy of the Empire: law caught between ruptures and continuities
4.3. The construction of the space of administrative authority (and arbitrariness): the insistence on the privileges of the Administration
4.4. The “(purely) political questions”: the same old (new) space of authority
4.5. The mandado de segurança as a product of tradition: the imposed limit of “purely political questions”

Part II. The mandado de segurança in transition: legal thought and the transformation of the institute
Chapter 5. The mandado de segurança in brazilian legal thinking: the role of the legal scholarship in the conformation of the new remedy
5.1. Transition as adscriptive time and the active force of legal scholarship
5.2. The construction of a doctrine of the mandado de segurança: solving some central issues
5.3. The mandado de segurança in the Estado Novo (1937-1945): de-constitutionalization and “processualization”

Chapter 6. The image of the mandado de segurança in the Vargas era: uses, impressions and expectations in the pages of «Correio da Manhã»
6.1. Brazilian press and the mandado de segurança: the case of «Correio da Manhã»
6.2. “The first mandado de segurança”: the constitutional remedy as an object of social interest
6.3. Exercise of police power
6.4. The political world and the mandado de segurança: the institute as an instrument of power
6.5. The mandado de segurança in the state bureaucracy: the civil service issue

Conclusions
1. The history of the mandado de segurança as a key to Brazilian legal thought: fundamental rights versus state authoritarianism
2. The fall of the Estado Novo and the re-constitutionalization of the mandado de segurança: “to be continued”

Bibliography
1. Primary sources
2. Secondary sources

Note
Biblioteca del Giornale di Storia costituzionale
Collana diretta da Luigi Lacchè, Roberto Martucci, Luca Scuccimarra
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In copertina: Dal diario del Brasile S. Paulo Città n. 3, 1954, olio su tela di Emilio Vedova, gentilmente concessa dai Musei Civici di Palazzo Buonaccorsi, Macerata.