“My truth is my Justice” - Dilemmas and paradoxes in relation to the principle of judicial impartiality

Abstract

This paper is the outcome of a research inside Rio de Janeiro’s State Court. The methodology consists in a dialogue I intended to do between law, which I studied under graduation, and anthropology, that I was introduced to, when I was under my post graduation studies. The research allows understanding that the principle of judicial impartiality consists in a belief, discursively constructed inside the judicial field, and it works as a structuring category inside the judiciary. However, the discursive belief strikes against the empirical reality, as the fieldwork data shows judge’s subjective aspects directly interfere during the decision making. It suggests that judge’s morality and sense of justice interfere during the process and often in its result. Between the paradox of “seeming impartial” and the fact of “being humans” the judges describe their dilemmas and the challenges they experience when they try “not to contaminate” their essential impartiality.