The Brazilian Judicial Elite: Towards Businessmen or Statesmen?

In the literature, sharing social and business ties has been identified as a trait of elite integration. Because the public private interface is traditionally occupied by political and economic actors, the question on the place of a judicial elite in regards to statesmen and businessmen remains answered. Many scholars assume that since the ones responsible for the machinery of law-enforcement carry out functions connected to the public good, they are fully aligned with the public interest. Growing episodes of activism outside the courtroom and court records empirically challenge the claim of judicial restraint, nonetheless. Are lawyers sitting at the state’s top bureaucracy mere technocrats interpreting and applying law or rather active participants in the political and economic setting, and if so, to what extent are they working as competitors or allies of other elites? Using a dataset comprised of 60 problem-oriented interviews from four corruption scandals in Brazil’s recent history, results indicate overlapping socioeconomic variables that place the judicial elite in proximity with the political and economic ones. Evidence of criminal cases against 258 executives and politicians, however, showcases that the rationales at use by the judicial elite ahead of recent anti-corruption investigations are more lenient towards top-managers than politicians. Bargained justice and pragmatism, imported from the USA, influence the worldviews of an emerging judicial elite in Brazil, even if its members continue to exhibit similar characteristics to those of the ruling elite-clique. Further understanding the role played by informal ties and networks and the distinctive cultural patterns offered by the Latino/Anglo-Saxon repertoires still lies ahead to advance the research beyond the current focus and address the issue of competition or cooperation intra-elites.