Storia di una «situazione extra- costituzionale»: il bando in Brasile (1824-1978)

Banishment, as a frontier institute between law and politics, could help us to understand legal order dynamics that the “normal” ones could not reveal. Based on the analysis of banishment in Brazil between 1824 and 1978, I would like to map different relationships between law and politics in history, more specifically this article aims to grasp the different levels of political instrumentalization of law within a modern legal system. In this period, there were two important cases involving the application of this kind of measure – the banishment of the imperial family in 1889 and that of left-wing partisans between 1969 and 1971 – which allow us to comprehend two different species of concepts of exception that underpinned the removal of Brazilian citizens of their own country measures. If, in a very essential level, legalism is a form of subordination of law to politics, both aforementioned cases unveil other levels of instrumentalization of juridical forms.