Religious School Education in Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Voting

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the arguments made by the eleven Justices of the Supreme Federal Court who, in 2017, decided on the constitutionality of offering confessional education in public schools. We will explore how long-term disputed ethical and legal values are rearticulated in these votes concerning the notion of belief, almost 40 years after defining Religious Education as a fundamental human right by the Constitution. It is not a matter of harking back to the topic of secularism, as a social process or as a legal norm or political doctrine. The discursive analysis of the ministers’ votes formulations aims, on the contrary, to unveil the different religious constructions implied in their uses of the terms religion and rights and to understand how they operate when putting forward an idea of citizenship and/or the nation. The aim is to clarify, from this systematic examination of the votes, the configuration of common legal sense when issuing value judgments about religion and its protection. Therefore, our primary focus will be to circumscribe what counts as religion in these legal narratives.