A genealogy of the critical discourses on the authoritarianism of the Brazilian Criminal Procedure Code

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation on the critical discourses thatattribute the authoritarianism of the Brazilian criminal procedure to a legacy ofthe fascist Italian criminal procedural legislation of 1930. At first, it reveals theimpossibility of this comparison by the lack of sources for verifying if there wasindeed the influence of Italian fascist law in the Brazilian Criminal Procedure Codeof 1941. Then, it is analyzed how this critical discourse diffuses among Braziliancriminal procedural law scholars from the 1990’s, due to their networks of academicand professional contacts, establishing a rupture with previous criticisms. Finally,the research aims to demonstrate how this approach between the Brazilian Codeand the Rocco Code was artificial and prevents Brazilian criminal procedurallaw scholars from realizing the influences of other foreign laws in legislation andcurrent judicial practices and prevents them from creating strategies to ensurethe implementation of constitutional guarantees in these new procedural forms.