Predatory judges, who they are and what they do
In recent times, the Brazilian press has been flooded with a new fashion. I am referring to predatory litigation. I've already talked about this subject a few times on my blog in Portuguese (vide 1, vide 2, vide 3). I believe, however, that it is necessary to talk about the other predators: the judges.
It is possible to distribute predatory judges into five major categories, although some of them belong to more than one of them.
The first category of toga predators are the "money-making judges", those who care more about their earnings than the cases they must judge. In this category are judges who receive salaries above the ceiling, those who invent and demand additional remuneration that is below morality and those who accept bribes to render decisions. They navigate a gray world in which legality and illegality are confused and/or coexist to provide economic advantages for toga predators. Some members of this category like to sell sentences and rulings wholesale.
The judges who believe they are Olympic gods and demand to be treated as if they were deities come soon after. They are the most common and pernicious predators in the Judiciary, because in addition to humiliating lawyers and citizens, "proud judges" ignore the legislation that they must comply with and enforce, preferring to apply distorted and personalized versions of the Law in proceedings. The members of this gang of predatory judges assassinate the prerogatives of lawyers, destroy the self-esteem of those who come into contact with them and compromise the objectivity of the Law by replacing it with their own egocentric subjectivities. On the streets, airports and planes people are always shouting "Do you know who you're talking to?"
The third category of toga predators is made up of “corporatist judges”. The only valid and effective Law that they recognize is the one that gives judges the privilege of never being punished. "Corporatist judges" protect the abuses and illegalities committed by their colleagues with great verbal eloquence and immoderate institutional violence. When they become magistrates, presidents of judges' associations and media celebrities, these toga-wearing predators transform lame excuses into pseudo-legal arguments favorable to members of their ranks who should be, but will not be, punished.
The "corporatist judges" are tireless termites. They devour the civilizing principle of the functional responsibility of judges and spew malicious, moldy and lying arguments. They are the ones who create the impenetrable institutional fortresses that guarantee impunity for their colleagues who commit small abuses or make large illegal deals. The "corporatist judges" were against the creation of the CNJ (acronym for the Brazilian public agency for external control of the Judiciary), but after this body was created they joined the other gangs of judges until they managed to capture it
There is a fourth category of toga predators: "biblical judges." It emerged and consolidated itself in the last two decades and makes up the so-called evangelical bench in the courts. "Biblical judges", also known as "preaching judges", apply Brazilian legislation in light of the Bible or a peculiar evangelical version of it. They hate the separation between state and religion and are extremely punitive towards citizens who do not belong to the same religion as them.
In general, it can be said that the "preaching judges" believe that the main mission of the Judiciary is to replace our secular democratic regime with an evangelical theocracy. Adherents of the mantra "More Bible, less Constitution", these fanatical judges make authoritarian, abusive and unconstitutional decisions to benefit evangelical pastors and politicians and harm their enemies.
The last major category of predatory judges is made up of “neoliberal judges”. They are more favorable to the “business as usual” of large multinational and national companies than to preserving the rights conferred by legislation on Brazilian workers and consumers. In recent decades, “neoliberal judges” have made great efforts to reduce the impact of compensation for moral damages in order to maximize business profits.
Banks, online sales platforms, health plans, supermarket chains, telephone companies, privatized water and energy distributors, etc... have greatly benefited from the new jurisprudence created based on the legal neoliberalism practiced by members of this category. In return, businesspeople pay for congresses and judges' conferences inside and outside Brazil. But this obviously does not constitute the purchase of wholesale sentences and rulings. The “neoliberal judges” tolerate the gay movement, but hate the MST (acronym for the landless peasant movement). They supported and applauded Jair Bolsonaro, but they feel uncomfortable in a country governed by Lula.
That's all for now, guys. The issues explored here in a very simple way can be discussed in more depth, but I confess that I get bored whenever I think about predatory judges. I am convinced that they are irrelevant and doomed to extinction. They are the biggest enthusiasts of Artificial Intelligence, a technology that will allow Brazil to throw them in the trash can, monitor them constantly, transform them into biological appendages of an automated system based on the 1988 Constitution that they hate and refuse to comply with and enforce. Okay… I know these are just tongue-in-cheek utopian ramblings.
In Brazil there are judges who do not fit into any of these categories. Judges for democracy are not predators. They are the main prey of money-seeking, arrogant, corporatist, preaching and neoliberal judges. The judges' professional prerogatives for democracy greatly bother their colleagues, because they can neither be removed from their positions, nor prevented from making valid and effective judicial decisions, nor silenced. Those who write scientific articles and books criticizing the ills of the State, Politics and the Judiciary are watched fiercely and tirelessly. It is not uncommon for democratic judges to face proceedings before the CNJ. Silencing them on social media seems to be the main goal of toga predators.