A seleção de juristas para a carreira da magistratura no Brasil pré-independência e transição: as leituras de bacharéis, seus quesitos, e a trajetória dos iniciais ministros do Supremo Tribunal de Justiça imperial

Abstract

This research aims to understand the selection of career judges during the Brazilian pre-independence period and its transitional moment to an independent country. The objective of this study was to investigate how jurists accessed the career of professional judge, at the end of the colonial period and at the beginning of the Brazilian empire, and what were the real requirements that were faced by the candidantes to access that position. To this end, the way in which judges were selected was discussed both in the early stages of the Brazilian empire and in the colonial regime, which preceded the formation of the independent Brazilian judiciary. Considering the existence of a well-structured process of recruiting jurists for the career of the colonial judiciary, in the form of the so-called leitura de bacharéis, used by the Portuguese government during the colonial period, this work consisted of analyzing the selection of judges who first composed the positions of the highest independent Brazilian court, that is, the ministers of the supreme imperial court of justice, and whom, due to their ages and trajectories, were selected according to the logic of the time studied. Verifying that almost all of the first ministers went through the leitura de bacharéis process, the documentation of their early Portuguese selection processes was studied, as well as secondary documents concerning the lives of their families and their social context. Having compared the information collected, it and considering the group of magistrates investigated, a conclusion was drawn about the real difficulties, or routes of access to that the jurists in question faced while seeking to achieve a position of career magistrate.