O processo de construção institucional da Defensoria Pública no Brasil: política, ideologia e grupos de pressão (1954-2014)

Abstract

The following paper presents an analysis on the process of institutional construction of the Brazilian Public Defender Office. The research was performed through a case study focused on the legislative process referenced to this institution, on the period of 1954 to 2014. This investigation intend to describe, comprehend and explain how the Public Defender Office had been through a substantial transformation on its institutional profile, having the period of 2004 to 2014 as an inflection point. Thus, trying to stablish a dialog with the case study about the institutional reconstruction process of the Brazilian Government Agency for Law Enforcement, made by Rogério Arantes (2002). That being, on the first part of the paper is discussed the theoretical, methodological and conceptual fundamentals that gave a north to the construction of this thesis. On the second part, it is made an historical revision about the trajectory of the Fluminense Legal Assistance, through a description and analysis of a few moments apparently with more significance on the evolution of this institution, between the years of 1954 and 1988, when the Legal Assistance gave way to the Public Defender Office. Therefore, the main standoffs of the institution on its embryonic phase are examined, as well as the main inflexion points that had impact on its process of institutional construction. This chapter ends with an analysis about the debate performed by constituent legislators on the scope of the Judicial Power‟s Subcommittee and the Public Defender Office during the National Constituent Assembly, analyzing the treatment conferred to the Public Defense on the Political Charter of 1988 and its developments to the institution throughout the 1990‟s decade. On the third part it is deliberated the institutional yaw reached by the legislative production used with the interests of the Public Defender Office, that enabled and reorientation of the State entity‟s profile on the period of a decade. In that manner, It has been examined each of the new legal definitions that widened the scope and attributions of the Public Defender Office, as well as the strategies applied by the members of the institutions to promote and pressure for the respective legislative changes. It is also discussed some of the repercussions that those changes caused, in addition on how the managers of the institution positioned themselves before those impasses. On the fourth part, it is examined, at length, the terms that have composed the ideological construction that has given wider doctrinal cohesion to pressure groups of public defenders, providing subsidy to elaborate justifications that started to underpin the legitimacy arrogated to the Public Defender Office to act accordingly with its new institutional functions. In conclusion, on this chapter it has been searched to identify some of the values and elements incorporated to the ideological universe of the public defenders, so that their concrete actions are guided with regard to their corporative activism.