A Constituição e o Congresso Nacional: a performance constitucional do legislador brasileiro

Abstract

The present work aims to evaluate the degree of constitutional responsibility of Brazilian legislator. Having established the theoretical premises that legitimize the legislative constitutional interpretation, the research promoted the mapping of internal and external institutional incentives that influence the constitutional interpretation that is developed during the legislative process. Then, it sought to identify the presence of internal incentives in the institutional design of Brazilian Congress through the study of the organizational structure of the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate. Subsequently, the main stages of the legislative process involving the appreciation of the constitutionality of the propositions were analyzed and, based on the data obtained through requests for access to information formulated at the two Houses, combined with doctrinal criteria, the opinions of the Commissions of Constitution, Justice and Citizenship of both Houses were selected for analysis. For the purpose of evaluating the constitutional performance of Brazilian legislator, based on constitutional doctrine, the parameter set was the presentation of constitutional reasons. In the end, the result of the research brought an overview of the degree of constitutional engagement of Congressmen from the analysis of opinions´ reasoning, revealing that, although they have at their disposal all necessary instruments for a high quality constitutional performance, they still do not play the role of constitutional interpreters according to their capacity.