29 May 2026
The Problem Is Not Politicization
When judicial nominations fail, the instinct is to blame politicization. But the collapse of Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf's candidacy for the German Federal Constitutional Court and the historic Senate rejection of Jorge Messias for Brazil's Supreme Court point to a different diagnosis. The problem did not lie in politics as such – but in the Brazilian intuition of “politicagem”: the subordination of judicial selection to short-term electoral performance. Continue reading >>
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09 July 2024
Unwritten Constitutional Law as a Brazilian Constitutional Category?
Brazilian constitutional law is profoundly marked by the ideal of codification. In this context, the ‘unwrittenness’ of certain constitutional problems is usually not treated as such. This is especially intensified through the size and textual openness of the Brazilian Constitution. Yet unwritten constitutional normativity plays (and can play) arguably a decisive role in Brazilian constitutionalism. Could one then articulate unwritten constitutional law as a Brazilian constitutional category? Continue reading >>
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