Abstract
Sustained since the early history of Brazil, the mutually beneficial relationship between the state and elites has been perpetuated throughout the centuries to the detriment of the rights, freedoms and interests of the rest of the population. By analysing primary and secondary sources on Brazil’s history, legal system, current affairs and general legal and political theory, as well as current and past domestic and international legal frameworks, this thesis highlights, in the case of Brazil, law’s role in cementing social and economic inequality, mirroring society’s class relations and providing the ruling classes with a tool for their continued socio-political-economic dominance, pinpointing the consolidation of their power on the development of a Coimbra-graduated consensually unified political elite during Brazil’s formation as a nation-state. Political and social sciences’ publications have concentrated on exploring Brazil’s legal system’s ingrained injustices, whilst Brazilian law research has been historically isolated from other sciences and unduly affected by the prejudices of the legal profession. This research links law with other disciplines by analysing the historical foundations of the inequities promoted by Brazil’s legal system as well as presenting both a theoretical and a practical framework for change. Theoretically, a conception of the rule of law, suitable to explaining why the observance of formal legality has not promoted the convergence between the country’s legal framework and its sociopolitical reality, is advanced. Importantly, such formulation offers an ideal that both matches Brazil’s aspirations and is compatible with the Western liberal democratic ideals defining the international world order into which the country is increasingly willing to participate. Practically, the often neglected conditions for the implementation of the rule of law are established, providing Brazil with the conditions for a rupture with its elitist past and the imposition of limits on the government’s exercise of power.