Institutional Responses to the Far Right: The Internal Affairs of the Brazilian Judiciary

The influence of the actions of judicial institutions in the political arena is a constantly discussed theme in social sciences. In Brazil, the concept of judicialization stimulated most academic reflections on Law and Politics since the 1990s. However, with Lava Jato and its political consequences, the concept of judicialization has lost part of its explanatory capacity. This loss is mainly due to the approximation of judicial actors to far-right groups or even their organization within professional associations, making necessary a comprehensive effort of these phenomena. In addition, there are also internal actions of these institutions in controlling the political positions of their members, especially those made public on social media. They refer to complaints filed with the courts' internal affairs offices and the National Council of Justice about judges who used social media to turn public their right wing political positions, such as those against vaccines, the use of masks, and social isolation measures. The goal is to understand the making of these complaints, the actors involved, which position is the target of the complaint, and how it is processed. To achieve this goal, an analysis of news stories that have as their theme the ideological positions of magistrates between 2019 and 2022 will take place. Based on the news and the correction processes - if any - we intend to establish their flow and results and identify the institutional efforts involved. The hypothesis defended here is that the processing of these complaints, made to the courts where the judges belong and to the National Council of Justice, is evidence of institutional concern about the image of the magistrature and should clash with the principles of autonomy and independence defended by its members. Moreover, it is unlikely that magistrates will be or were punished based only on these complaints if they are not associated with other problems, such as lack of productivity or mismanagement of the courts.