O primeiro Ato Institucional: Carlos Medeiros Silva e o STF no pós-Golpe de 1964

Abstract

Constitutional Act Number 1 established the first repressive guideline to legislatively protect the 1964 coup and the authoritarian attitudes adopted by the military forces after overthrowing Joao Goulart. Lawyers such as Carlos Medeiros Silva, along with ministers from the Supreme Federal Court (STF), pored over the new legislation during the period, appearing as it did within the Brazilian legal framework and modifying the Constitution. Support from the Constitutional Court for the coup was fundamental to the inclusion of the institutional act in the Brazilian legal system. Methodologically speaking, we employ the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu’s legal field, with characteristics related to its debate on institutional autonomy and the monopoly of the truth, analyzing press, biographies and legal articles developed by Carlos Medeiros da Silva that justified the granting of Institutional Acts by the dictatorship and their inclusion in the Brazilian “legal system”.