Carlos Medeiros Silva and the authoritarian exegesis of law

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2022/63261

This article aims to present the discursive strategies that seek to legitimize an authoritarian interpretation of law both in the regimes that support it and in the periods of re-establishment of formal democracy. It uses as a source of research the opinions produced between the 1930s and 1950s by one of the most active jurists of our exceptional regimes: Carlos Medeiros Silva (1907-1983). The article has two parts. In the first part, it analyzes the opinions produced during the Estado Novo. In the second, its positions after the re-democratization of the country in 1946. The argument is that the authoritarian interpretation of the law produced during the dictatorship of the Estado Novo resisted after the fall of Getúlio Vargas, confronting, through argumentative strategies, the determinations of the Constitution of 1946.

Keywords: Carlos Medeiros Silva; Exegesis; Authoritarian.