The judgment of ADPF 153 by the Federal Supreme Court: the consolidation of an obstacle to the judicialization of the crimes of the Brazilian dictatorship

Abstract

The Arguição de Descumprimento de Preceito Fundamental (ADPF) 153 is a lawsuit filed by the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) through which the entity seeks to question the applicability of the Amnesty Law (Law 6.683/79) to public agents of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship. The legal action was dismissed in a judgement in the plenary of the Federal Supreme Court, maintaining the understanding that the so-called ‘crimes connected to political crimes’ would be covered by the ‘bilateral amnesty’ generated by the law. Motions for clarification were filed by the OAB and the case is being processed to date. This article aims to analyze the argumentations of the parties involved in the litigation and the repercussion of the outcome of the judgement. The primary source was the judgement of the ADPF 153 and the secondary sources were the selected bibliography. It was found that, given the national and international repercussion of the case, in addition to the comparison with the results of judgements in similar cases in other countries of the region, the sentence handed down made Brazil an outlier in the repairment and memory policies of Latin American dictatorships, which had been making progress, albeit time at times, in the criminal liability of public agents involved in torture, disappearances and deaths of opponents of their regimes.