The Brazilian anti-torture act, the construction of the concept “crime against humanity” and the paradoxes of criminal punishment

• Autor(a) principal: Thorstensen Possas, Mariana
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Estudos Empíricos em Direito
• DOI: 10.19092/reed.v3i1.98
• Texto Completo: https://reedrevista.org/reed/article/view/98
• topic: tortura; punição; direitos humanos; racionalidade penal moderna; torture; punishment; human rights; modern penal rationality

This article aims at exploring the construction and the use of the distinction crimes against humanity / ordinary crimes to refer to two "categories" or "types" of crimes, according to the research interviewees: crimes against humanity would be those that violate directly or in an especially aggressive way the human rights and the ordinary or common crimes would be all that do not directly harm human rights. The content of the text is taken from my doctoral thesis, completed at the University of Ottawa in Canada, and the research topic was the legislative creation process in criminal matters, more specifically the creation of the law against torture in Brazil (Law number 9455/97). From an empirical point of view, the article focuses on the analysis on the interviews performed with politicians and human rights activists who participated directly or indirectly in the production of this specific statute.