A (in)constitucionalidade do uso de argumentos religiosos no processo legislativo brasileiro

Abstract

The present work investigates the juridicity of religious interests politization from Brazil´s Chamber of Deputies. For that, deputies discursive practices were analyzed during the period of the last ten years (2006-2016). The identification of these speeches occurred through the use of the computer application "Parliamentary Rhetoric", developed by Laboratory Hacker researchers to enable the access to the available speeches in the Chamber of Deputies official electronic address. The empirical research revealed the Brazilian Congress´ religious arguments diversity and led to the classification of these arguments into three distinct species (pluralistic, utilitarian and fundamentalist). The legal validity of these argumentative species use in Brazilian legislative process was analyzed by the explanation of rationality/constitutionality. Also, the procedures have been identified by which competent public organs achieve the preventive normative prepositions constitutionality control. The research was based on the theoretical reference produced by the post-positivist theories of Law, especially the discursive theory of Law elaborated by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. It was verified that the presence of religious discourse in the public sphere must be conditioned by the presuppositions of universality and secularization that characterize democratic deliberative processes. Thus, it was concluded that the use validity of religious arguments in the legislative process should be recognized only when they are presented in the form of pluralistic arguments because, contrary to utilitarian and fundamentalist arguments, they recognize religious truths as validity claims which are objectionable and fallible in the public sphere, and therefore admit the prevalence of democratic values in Brazilian society.