CNJ changes rules to meet corporate interests, study points out

Conceived to supervise the performance of agents of the Justice system, the National Council of Justice (CNJ) and the National Council of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (CNMP) have changed norms and deviated from their original purposes, in favor of corporate interests. The maneuvers were identified by researchers from the São Paulo Business Administration School of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV EAESP), who published an article this Monday (5th) in the Brazilian Journal of Social Sciences. The team of researchers found that, when dealing with resolutions, both bodies took on attributions that did not fit them. In the case of the CNMP, something that stands out are two resolutions from 2017, which authorized members to sign agreements in cases of administrative impropriety and in criminal matters. The inspiration, according to the authors of the article, came from the US Justice. Both the CNJ and the CNMP have also shaped the rules relating to the public tender, which impacts the configuration of the staff, in terms of diversity and inequality, since they change the way in which judges, prosecutors and prosecutors enter. In all, four changes were promoted in this regard, in the CNJ, and 13 in the CNMP. The constitutional amendment that created the two councils establishes that one must have at least three years of experience in the legal field in order to be able to exercise such functions. However, the councils started to take into account the candidate’s degree, including completion of specialization courses, when counting the experience time, which could favor the portion that manages to pay for them. Another aspect that entered the radar of researchers, and also under question, is the reservation of vacancies for blacks. The CNJ, the scientists point out, respects the self-declaration guaranteed by the Statute of Racial Equality, instituted by Law nº 12.288/2010. The CNMP, however, requires that the candidate who declares himself black or brown be submitted to the validation of a commission, which confirms the phenotype and, therefore, the belonging to the black population. For Rafael Viegas, one of the researchers who signed the article, such resolutions are positive, as they regulate the steps that make up the selection process, but, on the other hand, benefit candidates with certain characteristics. As is known, through the Sociodemographic Profile of Magistrates 2018, from the CNJ, the majority of judges in the country are male, white, married and Catholic. “These resolutions were, over time, distorting discussions that were held during the processing of the amendment, predicting the possibility that courses and postgraduate courses, including those offered by preparatory courses for these careers, which in the end required the delivery of a monograph, contain as a legal activity. This may be related to a trend towards an even greater elitization of these careers. This requires further studies to analyze the profile of the members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, but it should be noted that CNJ and CNMP were created considering the historical deficit of accountability magistracy in the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Brazil”, says Viegas, who is a political scientist specializing in topics such as bureaucracy and the functioning of the Public Ministry. The researchers analyzed the 303 CNJ resolutions and the 206 CNMP resolutions published between 2005 and 2019, with the help of software. What was observed was that the bodies edited, respectively, 97 and 88 resolutions, with the objective of modifying the content of norms that were previously in force. Agência Brasil contacted the CNJ and CNMP, but received no response.

Agência Brasil