Nepotism, which seems widespread in some Brazilian state courts, would be tackled by a ban on judges employing their relations. Another proposal is that the federal courts should be given the right to take over human-rights cases from local courts. The government has been asking Congress to approve this measure since 1996, after the massacre by police of a group of landless peasants in Eldorado do Carajas in Amazonia. Public outrage at the recent acquittal by a local court of the senior policemen involved in these killings seems at last to have pushed this issue on to Congress's agenda. In addition, judges would be required to have a minimum number of years as a qualified lawyer under their belts before being appointed.
Many current appeals are the result of poor decisions by inexperienced judges.
As a general impetus to speed up the course of justice, citizens would also have a constitutional right to a reasonably speedy hearing, as is enshrined in the constitutions of Mexico and Portugal, although how effective this would prove to be in practice remains open to doubt. However, an earlier proposal that would undoubtedly have been effective has been dropped. As well as cutting the number of time-wasting appeals, such a measure would have allowed the government to seek the swift defeat of the welter of temporary injunctions by local courts that often greet any new tax or privatisation, on the ground of unconstitutionality. Nevertheless, the current proposals would limit the worst effects of such injunctions by requiring that they would expire automatically after 120 days unless confirmed by a majority of the Supreme Court. Both groups have benefited from the creeping chaos in the judicial system.