Challenges for the realization of the human right to the reasonable duration of the process in Brazil at hundred years of Rui Barbosa’s Oração aos Moços.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: One hundred years have gone by since Rui Barbosa, when writing his Oration to the Young, registered the famous phrase in which he states that "justice delayed is not justice, but qualified and manifest injustice", relating the procedural timeliness to the very realization of justice. If the concern with the delay in the delivery of justice goes hand in hand with the historical construction of the State and Law, the problem that underlies this research, Rui Barbosa's "delayed justice" takes us back to the very history of the development of republican institutions in Brazil and the consolidation of the country as a Democratic State of Law.  

OBJECTIVE: to understand how the fundamental right to a reasonable length of process has been constructed and consolidated in Brazil over the last hundred years.

MATERIAL AND METHODOLOGY: deductive methodology, with a literature review and data collection from historical and current official documents. 

RESULTS: Over the last hundred years, state institutions have been transformed and consolidated, responding to the different challenges that have accompanied population growth, institutional crises and ruptures, and major changes in the national and international contexts. It is clear, in this period of a century, the expansion of the Judiciary and its importance for the strengthening of fundamental procedural rights, access to justice, and the protection of rights, permeated by the reasonable duration of the process. 

CONCLUSIONS: From the inspiration brought by the 100 years of the Prayer to the Young, we can see how much the Brazilian reality has transformed and become more complex. This transformation is representative of the effective consolidation of the country as a Democratic State of Law, in which institutions must continually improve in order to ensure the effective realization of the rights of all. In this context, "backward justice" is a concept that has been transformed and re-signified, driving and motivating the transformations that have taken place. Surely Rui Barbosa did not project, a century after his speech, the complex web of contemporary material and, therefore, procedural relations. However, he would possibly find a hybrid feeling when realizing the actuality of his words. A mixture of satisfaction for having correctly foreshadowed a wound that was opening in the Judiciary and dissatisfaction for the fact that the wound, despite the dedication of legal operators, is still open.