The ideal of joining in an association judges who were compromised with the recovering of the judges' citizenship, through a society transforming activity, aiming to promote the respect of civil rights, came into reality with the foundation of the "Associação Juízes para a Democracia" ("A.J.D."), at the University of São Paulo Law School, Brazil, on May 13, 1991.

Our Association is a non-profit organization and has no corporative action. Our purposes are the defense of the Democratic State's values, the preservation of the human being's dignity, the internal democratization of the Judiciary (in its organization and as it takes the decisions) and to recover the meaning of "public service"(as a service for the public). We think that the power which is exercised by the Judiciary must have a total transparency, allowing the citizen's control of it.

Today, after seven years, our association has expanded, gathering new members from all over the country. Lectures and seminars are sponsored by the association, and contacts are always made with the universities and the politician's world. We publish a journal, with an edition of 15,000 issues. Besides, there is a magazine, called "Justiça e Democracia", with three numbers already published, in which there are information and technical articles containing a modern and more human perspective of the judicial experience.

Our members do talk and write over important political questions, giving their opinion about everything concerning the organization and distribution of justice, taking part on debates, always presenting themselves as democratic judges. The association makes suggestions to members of law-making organizations, like sending propositions of constitutional amendments to the Brazilian Congress and discussing changes on courts of justice rules. We achieved getting an evident recognition of the organized civil society and non-governmental societies, here and abroad.

Out of Brazil, the association has tried to approach similar associations of Europe ("Magistratura Democratica" in Italy, "Jueces para la Democracia" in Spain and the E.U. "Magistrados Europeus por la Democracia y las Libertades-MEDEL") and groups of Latin-American judges with the same concerns as ours. Recently, our association organized a seminar about the judicial independence in Latin America, attended by more than a hundred judges from our continent and Europe.

"Associação Juízes para a Democracia" shows its pretension of being participating, looking forward to improvement in the judicial system, to get it ready to give effective answers to new conflicts becoming even more complex, those that are inherent in a mass society. Our members work in order to open the mentality and juridical culture to new attitudes, so that a critical vision emerges from the study of law together with other fields of the human knowledge. That will take us to the real democracy and social justice.

After all, it is not enough for a judge to know the law very well. It is necessary that he decides looking for the utopia of a fair society which, in the words of Cornelius Castoriadis, is not the one that had adopted fair laws to last forever, but that society in which the debate over justice is always taking place.

On this site, get to know the ideas and rules of our association, the activities that have already been developed and those which will be on next. As you will see, the summary of our publications are available too. Join the opportunity and keep in touch with us.