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Relational legal consciousness and anticorruption: Lava Jato, social media interactions, and the co-production of law's detraction in Brazil (2017–2019)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Fabio de Sa e Silva Open the ORCID record for Fabio de Sa e Silva [Opens in a new window]
Fabio de Sa e Silva*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of International Studies and Wick Cary Professor of Brazilian Studies, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
*
Fabio de Sa e Silva, Department of International and Area Studies, University of Oklahoma, 729 Elm Ave., Farzaneh Hall, Room 316, Norman, OK 73069, USA., Email: fabio.desaesilva@ou.edu
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Abstract

Starting in 2014, Brazilian politics was shaken up by the lava jato (LJ) operation, a law-centered anticorruption initiative. LJ unveiled a large corruption scheme in Brazil's national oil company Petrobras, which involved Petrobras directors, political party officials, and large construction companies. LJ was both disruptive and contentious. To some, it started a new chapter in Brazilian history, marked by greater respect for the “rule of law” and a collective “state of mind” concerned with “ending impunity” and building integrity in politics and businesses. To others, it contributed to undermining democracy and the rule of law, paving the way for an autocratic leader—the current Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. This article sheds further light on those discussions by looking at LJ as a site of “legal consciousness” production. Empirically, the article focuses on conversations generated by lead LJ prosecutors on a major social media platform (Facebook) from 2017 to 2019. Considering this body of data, the article addresses the question: “When prosecutors and ‘the people’ talked about LJ, what did they talk about?” My findings support the more skeptical views of the operation. The exchanges between LJ prosecutors and their Facebook followers supported the co-production of a cultural schema averse to the “rule of law.” These findings have implications for both legal consciousness and anticorruption research.

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Law & Society Review , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 344 - 368
Copyright
© 2022 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The ideas behind this article were first presented and discussed at the 2019 Law and Society Annual Meeting, the 2019 Cardiff Centre of Law and Society Annual Conference and the 2019 Yale Law School Human Rights Workshop. I thank Raquel Pimenta, Mario Schapiro, Ricardo Horta, and Francisco Mendes for their feedback to an earlier version of this article; Gabrielle Alves and Ana Margarida Martins for their research support; Charles Santana and Tarsio Barreto for the big data analysis support; and the three anonymous reviewers for their incredibly constructive comments to earlier versions. All the remaining flaws of this article are, of course, my sole responsibility.

How to cite this article: de Sa e Silva, Fabio. 2022. “Relational Legal Consciousness and Anticorruption: Lava Jato, Social Media Interactions, and the co-Production of Law's Detraction in Brazil (2017–2019).” Law & Society Review 56(3): 344–368. https://doi.org/10. 1111/lasr.12620

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