Entre a fé e o direito: as controvérsias sobre a última indicação à Suprema Corte dos EUA

Entre a fé e o direito: as controvérsias sobre a última  indicação à Suprema Corte dos EUA

Orientadora: Gabriellen da Silva Xavier do Carmo, mestranda voluntária do Cedire

Autora: Joyce de Fátima Garcia Silva

Após a morte de Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a juíza Amy Coney Barrett  foi indicada para ocupar sua cadeira na Suprema Corte dos Estados Unidos, a mais alta instância judicial do país, que assim como o Supremo Tribunal Federal no Brasil tem a função de zelar pela constitucionalidade das leis. A Suprema Corte americana é composta por nove juízes designados pelo Presidente e posteriormente aprovados pelo Senado, para um mandato vitalício. A juíza obteve o apoio do então Presidente Donald Trump e dos grupos conservadores, principalmente por apresentar em seus discursos opiniões religiosas fortes. Amy é católica praticante, mãe de sete filhos e se opõe pessoalmente ao aborto, uma das principais questões que dominam a divisão cultural nos Estados Unidos e geram conflitos entre grupos políticos.

Um dos pontos defendidos pelos opositores à indicação era que a experiência da juíza não seria adequada para compor o Tribunal. Para embasar isso, citaram como argumento os vários artigos que ela escreveu sobre questões judiciais enquanto lecionava na Universidade de Notre Dame. Ainda nesse sentido, enfatizavam uma palestra ministrada pela juíza onde teria descrito a carreira jurídica como apenas um meio para um fim e esse fim, em sua opinião, seria a construção do Reino de Deus. Alegava-se também que as recentes decisões da magistrada deixavam transparecer suas inclinações ideológicas, a exemplo de suas atividades no Tribunal Federal de Apelações em Chicago, nas quais ela apoiou o direito das armas, se opôs aos migrantes e mulheres que buscavam o aborto e se posicionou contra o Affordable Care Act, ou "Obamacare", a reforma da saúde promovida pelo ex-presidente que os republicanos buscam desmontar por anos, bem como teve a intenção de derrubar a decisão do caso Roe v. Wade, um marco histórico que tratou da legalização do aborto nos EUA.

Ocorre que, partindo do pressuposto de que a função exercida por um juiz deve ser de todas as formas pautadas pela imparcialidade, o fato de a magistrada expressar suas opiniões de forma aberta e incisiva poderia transparecer parcialidade em relação a determinados assuntos que podem se tornar objeto de ações judiciais na Suprema Corte num futuro próximo.

Entretanto, em meio às diversas opiniões que dividem o país, o apoio que Amy Coney Barrett teve por parte da bancada conservadora foi bastante significativo, bem como o apoio do então Presidente. A juíza ganhou ainda mais força em seu processo de confirmação no Senado, em que se envolveu em um conflito com a veterana democrata Dianne Feinstein, que se pronunciara sobre alguns de seus dogmas, declarações essas que foram usadas posteriormente por partidários de Barrett para acusar a própria Feinstein de intolerância, o que fomentou sua posição entre a direita religiosa.

Ademais, é necessário salientar que o fato de um indivíduo professar determinada convicção religiosa ou crença não o desabona para exercer qualquer atividade profissional. Afinal, juízes, como qualquer pessoa, possuem suas convicções e crenças particulares, as quais irão influenciar em certa medida o seu modo de vida, o que não significa necessariamente que o seu trabalho terá a qualidade reduzida ou que agirão com parcialidade e partidarismo.

Diante desse contexto, pode-se refletir sobre diferentes questões, dentre elas: Qual é o lugar das convicções e crenças particulares no exercício de funções públicas? Como deve ser a relação entre as convicções pessoais e o exercício de autoridade pública em uma sociedade democrática? 

REFERÊNCIAS:

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917943045/amy-coney-barretts-catholicism-is-controversial-but-may-not-be-confirmation-issu

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/28/barrett-court-catholicism-religion-judges-abortion/

 

Keynote Debate: Is Religious Freedom an Independent or Derivative Human Right? (Berkley Center)

November 17, 2011 | Religious freedom has been called America's "first freedom." But does it warrant such a special status? What, if anything, distinguishes religious freedom from other protected rights like the freedom of speech or assembly? Is religious freedom a right that stands on its own, or is it a subset of a broader freedom of conscience?

How such questions are answered carries profound consequences for the treatment of religion in American public life and in American foreign policy. On Thursday, November 17, 2011, the Religious Freedom Project hosted a keynote debate at Georgetown University on the question of the uniqueness of religious freedom. Debating this critical issue were Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman and Stanford Law Professor Michael McConnell.

Noah Feldman is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He specializes in constitutional studies, with an emphasis on the relationship between law and religion, constitutional design, and the history of legal theory. Feldman is the author of three books: Divided By God: America's Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005); What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building (Princeton University Press, 2004); and After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003). Feldman has also been on faculty at the New York University School of Law. In 2003, he served as a senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law. He is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. Feldman holds degrees from Harvard University, Oxford and Yale Law School.

Michael McConnell is Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law at Stanford University Law School. Educated at Michigan State University (BA '76) and the University of Chicago Law School (JD '79), he is an accomplished litigator, judge and professor of law. He has argued a dozen cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, served as a federal appellate judge for the Tenth Circuit and taught law at the University of Utah, the University of Chicago, Harvard and Stanford. Now retired from the bench, he is a professor at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center. His particular areas of interest and expertise in Constitutional law include freedom of speech and religion, the relationship between individuals and government, and originalism.

The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom

Thomas Jefferson, 1786

Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporal rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that, therefore, the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to the offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles, on the supposition of their ill tendency, is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency, will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

And though we well know this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no powers equal to our own and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law, yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

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Comment: 

Thomas Jefferson drafted The Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1779 three  years after he wrote the Declaration of Independence. The act was  not passed by the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia until 1786. Jefferson was by then in Paris as the U.S. Ambassador to France. The  Act was resisted by a group headed by Patrick Henry who sought to pass a  bill that would have assessed all the citizens of Virginia to support a plural establishment. James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance Against  Religious Assessments was, and remains, a powerful argument against state supported religion. It was written in 1785, just a few months before  the General Assembly passed Jefferson's religious freedom bill.  Both the draft  version of the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom  and  the Memorial and  Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments  are availalbe on this site.

Source: The Religious Freedom Page - University of Virginia.

First Amendment to the United States Constitution

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".

Proposed 9/25/1789

Ratified 12/15/1791