COVID-19 Reports:
Accessing Brazilian Legislative and Judicial Information – 21 September 2021
No. 10: Special Update on Brazil by Abby Dos Santos and Marilia Mello (October 9, 2020)
No. 10: Atualização Especial sobre o Brasil por Abby Dos Santos e Marília Mello (9 outubro 2020)
Excerpt from Reports:
Brazil’s first novel coronavirus case was confirmed on February 25, 2020, but the country had already declared a public health emergency (Portaria nº 188/2020) on February 3, 2020, and passed Law No. 13,979/2020 on February 6, 2020, providing measures to deal with the novel coronavirus public health emergency. These early responses were part of an effort to repatriate Brazilian citizens from Wuhan, China. In late March, Brazil closed its land borders, and by April, Brazil’s House and Senate started working on a “War Budget” to authorize emergency spending (“Orçamento de Guerra” – PEC 10/2020; PEC 10/2020 fase 2 (106/2020); PEC 106/2020 fase 3). The budget recently passed but is still awaiting presidential signature.
Unfortunately, Brazil’s health crisis has morphed into a political crisis. In late March, a federal court in Rio de Janeiro banned President Jair Bolsonaro from spreading anti-quarantine propaganda that went against Ministry of Health recommendations. The Minister of Health Luiz Henrique Mandetta was later fired in mid-April by Bolsonaro after continued disagreement about mitigation efforts. Then the Minister of Justice Sérgio Moro quit in late April after accusing Bolsonaro of improper conduct surrounding the firing of his federal police chief Maurício Valeixo, which started discussions about possible impeachment on top of growing criticism of Bolsonaro’s handling of the health crisis. Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court has also weighed in on a dispute between the São Paulo newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo and Bolsonaro about his COVID-19 tests, ordering the disclosure of Bolsonaro’s COVID-19 exams (Rcl 40,574). And just last week, the second Minister of Health Nelson Teich quit, and there is currently no Minister of Health appointed yet. … Read More.
No. 10: Special Update on Brazil by Abby Dos Santos and Marilia Mello (October 9, 2020) Atualização Especial sobre o Brasil
No. 11: Current Demands on Brazil’s Labor Courts by Daniela Majorie Akama dos Reis and Abby Dos Santos (October 17, 2020) Demandas Atuais na Justiça do Trabalho do Brasil
COVID-19 Legislation:
- Planalto: President of Brazil’s Legislation Portal
- LeisMunicipais: State Legislation
- Legislation of States, Federal District, and Capital Cities (government website)
COVID-19 Judicial Updates:
- Conselho Nacional de Justiça (CNJ) (National Justice Council)
- International Association for Court Administration – Survey to Measure Worldwide Judiciary Response to COVID-19 Pandemic, Brazil’s data provided by the International Association for Court Administration (IACA) in partnership with Federal Justice and iJuspLab (Federal Justice Innovation Laboratory of São Paulo)
- International Association for Court Administration …. See YouTube video about this research here.
- National Observatory – Judicial Actions – Statistics
COVID-19 Bibliographies:
- Brazil’s Association of Librarians and Information Science Professionals of the Federal District (ABDF – Associação dos Bibliotecários e Profissionais da Ciência da Informação do Distrito Federal) – the ABDF has created a virtual library called CONVIDE-i9, which is a collaborative initiative between ABDF, FEBAB, and other volunteer librarians committed to information management to support Brazilian and international societies. Their main objective is to be a source of accurate and reliable information.
- Brazil’s House of Representatives Library – the House Of Representatives Library collected official websites on coronavirus (COVID-19) in Brazil and the world (Centro de Documentação e Informação da Câmara dos Deputados – Informações oficiais sobre o coronavírus (Covid-19) no Brasil e no mundo)
- Brazil’s Senate Library – the Federal Senate Library organized COVID-19 related resources from a network of 12 federal administrative libraries into their catalog
- Brazil’s Labor Court Library – the Labor Court librarians created a spreadsheet with bibliographical information on Covid-19 and Labor Law
COVID-19 Labor Updates:
- Labor Courts — Regional Labor Courts (Tribunais Regionais do Trabalho – TRTs) and Superior Labor Court (Tribunal Superior do Trabalho – TST)
- Consultor Jurídico blog – Termômetro Covid-19 — coronavirus impacts on Brazil’s labor courts
- Covid–19 and Its Effects on Labor Law — The librarians at the Labor Court are creating a spreadsheet with bibliographic information on COVID-19 and labor law in Brazil.
COVID-19 Legal Updates:
- Law Library Of Congress – Global Legal Monitor on Brazil
- Latin Lawyer: Brazil COVID-19 Information Hub
- Consultor Juridico (in Portuguese)
COVID-19 Health Updates:
- Brazil’s Ministry of Health
- Conselho Nacional de Secretários de Saude – access to state norms related to COVID-19
Newspapers:
Abby is the Reference Librarian at Caplin & Drysdale, in Washington, D.C. Previously, Abby worked at Georgetown University Law Library as the International & Foreign Law Collection & Services Coordinator. She earned her B.A. in International Studies, Spanish Literature, and a minor in Philosophy at Macalester College, in St. Paul, Minnesota. After college, she worked in international development at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP). She received her J.D. at the University of St. Thomas (UST), in Minneapolis, after her work at CLDP inspired an interest in the law and her MLIS degree from Catholic University of America. She was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and grew up speaking Portuguese, Spanish, and English.
Marilia Mello is a Brazilian law librarian with 20 years of professional experience. Currently, she is the library director of the Federal Court 1st Region since 2018. Actively promote the library and its leading-edge resources, services, and innovations. She as a Bitner Research Fellow at Cornell University and previously worked at Brazil’s Supreme Court of Justice as well the U.S. Library of Congress, Rio de Janeiro Office.
Daniela Majorie Akama dos Reis holds a PhD in Information Science, a Master’s degree in Information Science with a FAPESP scholarship, and a Bachelor’s degree in Library Science, all from Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Daniela currently works at an international school library and has previous experience in law firm libraries in São Paulo, Brazil.
Monitoring the Legal Response to COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean 