Impeachable offenses in the Brazilian law of presidential high crimes: Lessons from the Dilma Rousseff case

Abstract

The article faces an old question of Brazilian Public Law that gained momentum in 2016, amidst the trial and ousting of former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. It regards the nature of impeachable offenses [crimes de responsabilidade] in Brazilian Law. Brazilian legal culture has held a century long debate on whether those “crimes” are of a strictly criminal nature, or whether they are political wrongdoings in a broader sense. Many of those who wrote on this topic over 2016 have assumed that holding impeachable offenses to the standard of indictable criminal offenses would bring more stability to Brazil’s presidential regime. This article confronts that opinion. I draw on evidence from the history of Brazilian public law doctrine, from comparative law (USA) and from the current political science literature on the topic to reaffirm that presidential impeachable offenses in Brazil need not be of strictly criminal nature. I seek to show how this view is not only wrong, but it also fails to promote the desired political stability in Brazil’s presidential system.