Lawfare - contexto, conceitos, características e aplicações : um paralelo com as condenações de Lula na Operação Lava Jato

Abstract

This paper aims to identify whether the Lava Jato Operation, specifically the Lula case, was a target of lawfare. This practice is understood as the manipulation of law to achieve political ends, and promotes, among other consequences, the annihilation of an enemy. The study covered the areas of lawfare, both in military doctrine and in the local context. The research also promoted the study of broader objectives arising from its practice related to geopolitics and the expansion of a neoliberal agenda in Latin America. To identify lawfare, we considered the dimensions proposed by COMAROFF, for whom lawfare, like traditional wars, are characterized by the existence of three dimensions: geography, weaponry, and externalities. The geography is made in the jurisprudence, corresponding to the battlefield where the clash will take place, it is identified in Lava Jato a manipulation of the jurisdiction of the Curitiba Court that fits the operation in this dimension. The weaponry are the laws, especially the rules that deal with corruption, whose content prescribes broad concepts and criminal types that facilitate their adaptation to various facts. The externalities refer to external factors that interfere in the achievement of the lawfare. In the Lava Jato case, the media's role in shaping public opinion was very important for the application of lawfare. The conclusions of the work, in the wake of the recent judgments of the STF on the incompetence of the Curitiba Court and the suspicion of Sergio Moro, corroborates that the Operation was, in fact, the most complete case of lawfare in contemporaneity.