The professor of Rio de Janeiro Law School (FGV DIREITO RIO), Ivar Hartmann, participated, on November 21st, in a public hearing at the Supreme Federal Court (STF) on prior authorization of biographies. Researchers and parliamentarians discussed the issue, which has caused controversy among authors, scholars and Brazilian artists.

Ivar Hartmann, highlighting recent decisions of the Supreme - such as in the case of the marijuana march and the Press Law (ADPF 130), proved to be against the requirement of prior authorization for the publication of biographies. We hope that the ministers of the Supreme will give precedence to this direct action of unconstitutionality, by ruling out at least the misinterpretation of Articles 20 and 21 of the Civil Code, which have been used to require prior license to publish any type of work, said the professor.

He also defended the establishment of a more objective criterion to prevent each researcher from spending the rest of his/her life thinking about his/her future work under the perspective of censorship and risk. In this sense, the works of Rio de Janeiro Law School warn about the risk of master's and doctoral programs' theses that deal with important figures of Brazilian history being banned from universities based on this legal device.

According to Hartmann, the criterion must be to identify the bad faith on what is reported, since there is no absolute truth in academic research.

Please click here to watch the public hearing (in Portuguese).