Inherited Capital and Acquired Capital The Socio-political Dynamics of Producing Legal Elites

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the results of research on the structures of social, political and academic capital that are able to demonstrate and explain the existence of power structures of the Brazilian juridical field, especially with regard to the administration of the State judicial system. With this objective in mind, the research analyzed the personal, professional and academic trajectories of members of the institutional, associative and academic elites linked to the administration of the State judicial system. Questioning the thesis that the social diversification of legal professions would necessarily produce ideological and political changes in the Brazilian judicial system, my main hypothesis is that the existence of a political subfield of the administration of the judicial system may be a factor in the resistance to reforms, indicating the control of this political dimension of the Brazilian State by elites with characteristics much less diverse than those of their professional bases.

Keywords

• Judicial system
• juridical field
• legal elites
• legal professions
• judicial reforms