“A lei e o direito são produtos do seu tempo”: a instituição da justiça e os operadores do direito na espacialidade sertaneja cearense (1890 a 1940)

Abstract

Reflecting on the judiciary and on the relations established by the operators of the law between the years 1890 and 1940 are essential to know the society we are part of and the legal mechanisms that exist today. In this research, we seek to understand the legal space, constituted by a system of interactions, and the characters that compose it. We examine how the Judiciary, as a social creation, has been undergoing modifications over time according to its time. And, how the operators of the law and their networks of relations, trajectories and experiences influenced the decisions, the (re) interpretations of the laws and the stories of conflict in the district of the central sertão of Ceará. Essentially, we used a plurality of sources such as the judicial proceedings (civil, criminal and labor), reports, letters, minutes, court registry books, protocol and sentences, newspapers, magazines, notarial records, besides the criminal and civil codification. These sources were treated based on the indicary paradigm, which consisted in the procedures of reduction and amplification of the observation scale centered on micro-analysis. The main evidence showed us that the game existing between conceiving the law and applying it on a practical level has a diversity of components in this conception, that is, the social context of those involved, the political relations established, the diverse experiences of the operators of the law, the structural problems of the direct influence of political agents on judicial activities, the precarious characteristics of the district, the high turnover and the lack of resources and professionals are part of this system of interpellations. In this sense, when we examine the tensions and contradictions of the judicial district of Senador Pompeu, in the state of Ceará, we put back into Clio's arms the histories fragmented by time, which for a long time were submerged in the silence of history.