BRAZIL

1. The ICON•S Brazil Conference took place on December 2-3, 2021. The conference focused on the role of courts in securing democratic stability in contexts of political polarization and rising authoritarianism and featured Tom Ginsburg and Luís Roberto Barroso speaking at the opening and closing of the event. The core of the Conference was structured in panels designed to give the opportunity for researchers to receive feedback from members of our board on the ongoing research and, with that in mind, the Chapter circulated a call for papers. This was the second ICON•S Conference as the Chapter endeavors to establish it as a mainstay of the Brazilian academic calendar.
2. We have structured a webinar series organized on a monthly basis structured as independent panels chaired by different members of our board. The idea is to have an ongoing series discussing different current topics that are deemed relevant by our board members, both as a way to contribute to the continuing debates on public law and as a way to involve our board members in chapter activities. Each monthly webinar is chaired by a board member on a topic of their choosing and with the presence of participants selected by them. The first event took place on October 26, 2021 hosted by UFMG, and was a roundtable to discuss recent books on democratic erosion by Emilio Peluso Meyer and Tímea Drinóczi.
3. In April 2021, the Chapter held the webinar “The Global South in Comparative Constitutional Law”, hosted by Insper (one of our partner institutions to discuss the book of the same name (edited by Dann, Riegner, and Bönneman), with several scholars from our board, from Humboldt University, and other institutions in Latin America.
4. UFMG, one of our partner institutions, organized during 2021 a series of online seminars on Constitutionalism and Democracy with several international scholars (many of which affiliated with ICON•S), with the support of ICON•S Brazil, and organized by Emilio Peluso Meyer (one of our board members).
5. So as to maintain staggered terms in our board, we have not filled all of our seats at the founding of the chapter and, as such, as per our bylaws, we are still in the process of electing new members to our board until it reaches its full size. In this process we have added (by means of an internal election, within our current board) two new members this year: Juliana Cesario Alvim Gomes (Federal University of Minas Gerais – UFMG) and Gabriel Marques da Cruz (Federal University of Bahia – UFBA; Baiana Law School). As such our Board has now 15 out of its 19 seats filled and we will continue to fill the remaining seats as per our bylaws. As we expand, we will maintain our commitment to the goal of having a board that is more representative of the ethnic, gender and regional diversity of Brazil.
6. We have created an ICON•S Brazil twitter account @icon_brasil and recruited a team to manage it on a daily basis so as to keep it active and responsive to ongoing initiatives by ICON•S and its chapters as to contribute to publicizing them. For this team, we have invited four graduate law students (from the Federal University of Paraná, the State University of Rio de Janeiro, and the University of São Paulo).

https://www.insper.edu.br/en/events/the-global-south-and-comparative-constitutional-law/

http://www.iconnectblog.com/2020/10/announcement-icon-s-brazil-panels-on-megacities-and-constitutionalism/

https://pos.direito.ufmg.br/?home-noticia=ufmg-seminar-series-in-constitutionalism-and-democracy

There are no calls for papers open.