Talk:foro privilegiado

Definition issue

So, what is foro privilegiado? It has to do with crimes committed by high officials related to their official functions, and how they are judged. The foro privilegiado (lit.: privileged forum) ensures that officials in certain high posts who are accused of crimes are not obliged to have their case heard by judges or courts of lower rank at the outset, but may proceed directly to the higher courts. The 1988 Constitution names exactly which officials have recourse to this privilege.

There are a few problems in coming up with just a few words to translate foro privilegiado. One is that the concept does not exist in Anglo-Saxon law, and is rarely discussed in English, afaict. Although there are plenty of references to it in Portuguese, there are not so many in English. Another, is the history of the term: foro privilegiado has changed meaning somewhat through various versions of the Brazilian Constitution since 1891, and now is used as a shorthand, or more familiar way, to refer to what is now known more formally in the 1988 Constitutional as pt:w:foro especial por prerrogativa de função. Literally, this might translate as, "Special Forum by Prerogative of [High] Office", "forum" here meaning which level tribunal, and "office" meaning your job title or position in the government, i.e., how high up it is: Senator, Minister, President, etc. If such a thing existed in Anglo-Saxon law, maybe we would come to know it as "Positional prerogative" or some such shorthand, but as it doesn't, neither a shorthand term like that, nor the full literal translation conveys anything to a reader. More to the point, there are few, if any, attempts at English translations in reliable sources, although there are English texts which talk about it, or attempt to explain what it is, without also trying to find two or four words in English to render it. (I've even seen a source trying to explain that foro privilegiado is *not* the same as foro especial por prerrogativa de função, but that seems to be the minority view of a purist, who wants to restrict use of the term foro privilegiado to the privilege as it existed under the 1891 Constitution, and use the six-word term exclusively for the modern privilege under the 1988 Constitution; ignoring the fact that the earlier term now survives as a popular, briefer way to refer to the latter.) Thirdly, the term is a moving target: there have been moves in the Senate (2017) to get rid of it entirely, and in the courts (2018) to redefine who exactly is eligible for it.

You would think that having foro privilegiado would make your case take less time, since you're skipping all the procedures that would have happened in the lower courts, but the reverse appears to be the case, for reasons I don't fully understand. One English source that covers this is Damgaard-2018.

My suggestion for a Wikipedia article, would be to do what most English sources do, namely, leave the term as foro privilegiado in the English, italicized, and follow it with an explanation, either in-line, or in an explanatory footnote. I'm not sure of Wiktionary rules enough to know how to handle this here. Maybe User:Surjection will know what to do with it. Mathglot (talk) 23:01, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

You can write a longer English definition, but it should stay at one or two sentences and ideally link to some of the concepts mentioned if there are any less common words. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 00:30, 15 December 2019 (UTC)