Accessing Justice in Brazil’s Urban Amazon: Brazilian Legal Aid Lawyers at Work

• In Event: 1142 - Law and Organizations

Abstract

How do poor citizens seek legal representation and navigate the legal system in Brazil? This is an important question, because legal aid is insufficient and the majority of Brazilians cannot afford legal services. This paper addresses this issue by examining a persistent social problem that has followed urbanization in the Brazilian Amazon. Arguably, social and spatial segregation are characteristics of Brazil’s cities and judicial system. The Belém Metropolitan Region (BMR), for instance, has an urban population of approximately two million inhabitants. Fifty percent of them reside in areas identified as subnormal agglomerations. At the same time, the BMR has approximately 145 public defenders to attend to the needy. Furthermore, the inadequate infrastructure that serves disadvantaged neighborhoods in the BMR, combined with a heavy rainfall season, exposes more than half million people to flood hazard and displacement. These are longstanding social problems for impoverished individuals who have their rights violated by the state’s actions in governing common goods and providing access to justice. Given the dispositions of ordinary disputants in society, interview data reveal that they lack the necessary forms of capital to reach lawyers and settle conflicts. Consequently, even when poor claimants exercise agency and find an attorney, they struggle to find legal relief. Therefore, this work contributes to the literature on urbanization, law and society, and inequality in a Latin American region that has endured decades of social and spatial segregation.

Author

• Vitor Dias, Indiana University-Bloomington