The electoral criminal jurisdiction between constitutional normativity and the “mermaid song”: competence and composition of the Brazilian Electoral Justice after the Supreme Court decision in the case of Inquiry n. 4435

Abstract

The article is intended to address, under the constitutional and legal prism, the controversy surrounding the competence and composition of the Electoral Justice after the decision of the STF drawn up in the records of Inquiry number 4435/DF. In that decision, the STF reaffirmed that the jurisdiction for the adjudication of crimes related to electoral crimes is of the Electoral Justice. The content of the decision, although not new, has generated a chain of events that culminated in several proposals to modify the electoral criminal jurisdiction, especially regarding the rules of competence and the composi- tion of the Electoral Justice. The purpose of the text, based on the hermeneutic critique of law, is to demonstrate that such attacks, not infrequently based on non legal grounds, are unconstitutional and illegal in the strict sense and, furthermore, that they are directed to inappropriate decisionmaking forums. reinforcing their illegality (constitutional and strict). For this, we will use the inductive me thod.