The conceptions of autonomy construed by the Direct Action of Unconstitutionality 4.424/Federal District in respect of women in the context of domestic violence and the agency dilemma

Abstract

This article analyzes the conception of autonomy present in the reasoning of the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court appellate decision in the Direct Action of Unconstitutionality 4.424/Federal District, which established the legal nature of the criminal prosecution for cases of bodily injury committed against women in context of domestic violence. The analysis was conducted through the double axis thesis – a classification of relational autonomy theories, proposed by feminist liberal philosopher Diana Meyers –, along with discourse analysis techniques, and showed that both the majority and the dissenting opinion used value-saturated conceptions of autonomy (one prescribing the filing of a criminal complaint as the autonomous choice, and the other prescribing the opposite – the not filing or its revocation) and constitutive values in common (such as rationality and dignity). Because they remained attached to the traditional-liberal conception of autonomy, they fell short to answer the agency dilemma in question.