Legal elites in Brazil: the case of the National Security Court (1936-1945)

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the social profile of the judges who per-tained to the National Security Court (1936-45) to identify the valued resources, which were acquired and mobilized by social agents; the strategies; and princi-ples of legitimation. Using data collected in the Brazilian Historical-Biographical Dictionary (DHBB), I establish bases for comparison between the profile found in these judges and in remarkable studies about the elite of the Brazilian judiciary, namely Junqueira et al (1997), Werneck Vianna et al (1997), Bonelli (2001), Sadek (2006), Santos e da Ros (2008) and Oliveira (2012).

Keywords

• new state
• authoritarianism
• elites
• national security court