“Assim se espera Justiça”: o remédio jurídico do habeas corpus no Supremo Tribunal Federal, 1920-1929.

Abstract

This study contributes to debates on the process of constructing and exercising citizenship in the First Republic of Brazil through an analysis of the relationship between Rio de Janeiro's population and the federal government, as well as an examination of the ways the population of Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s manifested and contested their acquired rights. It analyzes the exercise of citizenship within the exclusionary political model of the time, considering the extent to which Rio‟s citizens claimed their constitutional rights through the federal judiciary. The study works with habeas corpus cases originating from the Federal Supreme Court, located in the Federal Supreme Court Archive in Brasília and in the National Archive in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Throughout the First Republic, habeas corpus was considered "the great remedy" for the problems citizens faced, since it was the only legal instrument that protected individual freedom at that time. These cases demonstrate that many of Rio‟s citizens considered the judiciary to be a space in which they could recover what they considered their rights. However, the examination of the habeas corpus petitions brought to the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil suggests that the Supreme Court did not, in fact, contribute to the guarantee of such rights, since the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil had a modus operandi which made it difficult to concede the requests for habeas corpus.