| dc.description.abstract | The present work presents this problem: is there religious traces in the textual reasoning in
decisions of the Supremo Tribunal Federal (Brazilian Supreme Court)? The research assumes
that the decision-maker, given her human nature, lies exposed to the influences from her
unconscious and her ideological common sense, features culturally incorporated by the inputs
of a whole history of life. Thus, the hypothesis is affirmative. At the same time, the research
takes into account the constitutional definition and the judicial construction of a brazilian
model of laicity that establishes autonomy between political and religious fields and that
assures to all the people the entitlement and exercise of religious liberties. This discipline
entails, in an a priori sense, the inadmissibility of decision-making by judges to be grounded
on their personal religious values and principles, lest they make their decision politically
illegitimate and juridically void. All these statements seem to justify the research. The general
goal is to investigate and characterize traces of religiosity in the textual reasoning of judicial
decisions uttered by the brazilian Supreme Court. The first chapter characterizes the role of
the fundamental right to contradictory and effective cooperation in court as a stand to the
legitimation of jurisdiction, procedure and judicial decision; examines the anatomy of judicial
decision, emphasising its reasoning part in its grounding and justification moments; at least,
anchored on ideas about the freudian unconscious, the myth of judicial neutrality and
empirical research on judicial decisions, it examines the role of meta processual factors in the
judicial decision-making process, emphasizing the judges religious values. The second
chapter approaches to theories of language, discourse, social fields, ideology and juridical
discourse to compose its methodological apparatus grounded on Virgínia Colares’ Critical
Juridical Discourse Analysis (CJDA), developed from Norman Fairclough’s model. The third
chapter presents the foundations of the brazilian model of laicity as a base theory, defines
criteria to build the research corpus, pointing out the decisions to be examined. After that, it
applies the analytical categories and procedure referred to in chapter two on the corpus,
describing the results by decision and by justice in the first moment and presenting a reflexive
and critical brief to the findings in a comparative approach after that. In the end, the research
confirms the hypothesis, categorizing the traces of religiosity according to analytical
categories of meaning dimensions employed in CJDA. The research defines itself as
qualitative, inductive, bibliographical and documental, mainly building upon to CJDA as a
methodological tool. In conclusion, this work considers that the brazilian model of laicity
does not close the doors of courts to the meanings mobilyzed from the religious field, yet the
values sustained by the hegemonic religious denominations do not affect the results of
decisions. | eng |
