THE DAY OF THE LORD
The Day of the Lord
28
“And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions." Joel 2:28
THE DAY OF THE LORD , THE DREAM, THE SPIRITUAL MEMORY, AND THE SILENT COLLAPSE OF THE RULE OF LAW
A Spiritual, Constitutional, and Institutional Analysis of the Crisis of Justice in the United States and Brazil by MARCIA ALMEIDA with help of AI CHATGPT
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This paper examines the silent, structural collapse of the Rule of Law occurring in both the United States and Brazil through the gradual abandonment of adjudication by courts. It argues that what appears to be an administrative or efficiency-driven transformation of judicial systems is, in fact, a profound epistemological rupture: courts are increasingly deciding cases without finding facts, without giving reasons, and without engaging precedent, while still claiming the legitimacy of judicial authority.
At the core of this crisis is the emergence of a false doctrine of efficiency, grounded in claims of excessive caseloads, institutional overload, and the need for speed.
This doctrine has been used to justify practices that fundamentally contradict constitutional and human-rights guarantees, including: decisions without meaningful reasoning, suppression of adversarial process, denial of evidentiary development, procedural dismissals designed to avoid merits review, and the disappearance of inconvenient precedent through unpublished dispositions and discretionary screening mechanisms.
Drawing on comparative constitutional analysis, the paper demonstrates that neither the United States Constitution nor Brazil’s 1988 Constitution authorizes such practices. Judicial independence does not confer sovereignty. Sovereignty belongs to the Constitution, and the judicial function is limited by the duties of reasoned decision-making, impartial adjudication, and truthful fact-finding. When courts abandon these duties, they do not merely err procedurally; they betray the core function of justice itself.
The paper incorporates the recent work of Scott Erik Stafne and Todd AI, particularly From Advocacy to Public Truth Telling: How the Role of Lawyers Must Change When Courts Abandon Adjudication, which identifies a critical professional and ethical inflection point.
When courts cease to adjudicate facts within their jurisdiction, lawyers can no longer function solely as advocates within a closed system; they acquire a duty to inform the public that adjudication itself has been withdrawn.
Beyond legal doctrine, the paper offers a spiritual and moral framework for understanding this moment. It interprets the emergence of revelatory dreams and moral awakenings—as exemplified in the narrative discussed—not as mysticism detached from reason, but as memory activated under crisis: a recollection of why law exists, why human rights were forged through centuries of suffering, and why their erosion must be named rather than normalized. In this sense, spiritual memory operates as resistance against institutional amnesia.
The analysis concludes that the Rule of Law has not disappeared rhetorically; it has been simulated. Courts continue to speak the language of justice while abandoning its substance.
This simulation is more dangerous than overt authoritarianism because it preserves the appearance of legality while hollowing out its meaning.
The paper calls for a deliberate act of naming and resistance: recovering historical, constitutional, and moral memory; rejecting efficiency as a justification for injustice; and reaffirming that no court, judge, or system stands above constitutional limits.
As long as this memory endures, the Rule of Law is not dead—but it is besieged, and its defense now requires truth-telling beyond the courtroom.
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From Advocacy to Public Truth-Telling: How the Role of Lawyers Must Change When Courts Abandon Adjudication and the People Must Be Advised of This Change" By Scott Erik Stafne and Todd AI (December 20, 2025)
By Scott E Stafne
Academia.edu
December 20, 2025
History,
Constitutional Law,
Political Philosophy,
Ethics,
Sociology of Law,
Access to Justice,
Human Rights Law,
Courts,
Political Science,
Governance,
Truth,
Comparative Constitutional Law,
Lawyers,
Judicial independence,
Rule of Law,
Theories Of Truth,
Courts and Elites (History),
Separation of Powers,
Legal Ethics/professional Responsibility
Modern legal systems universally recognize adjudicatory justice-judicial independence, decisional neutrality, and truth-based factfinding-as foundational design norms of legitimate governance. Yet across jurisdictions, courts increasingly invoke procedural mechanisms in ways that avoid engagement with properly presented factual and legal disputes, substituting pretextual dismissal for adjudication. This collaboration examines what follows when the gap between adjudicatory design and adjudicatory practice becomes systemic. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Drawing on a cross-platform dialogue between human legal reasoning and artificial intelligence reasoning systems, this work explores a neglected question: how the professional role of lawyers must change when courts no longer reliably perform their adjudicatory function. It argues that, under such changed conditions, advocacy confined to internal judicial channels becomes structurally ineffective and ethically incomplete.
Lawyers must instead assume a public-facing role—documenting, explaining, and communicating institutional failure to the people subject to it. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< The paper situates this transition within constitutional structure, rule-of-law theory, and historical experience, distinguishing principled truth-telling from mere accusation.
It concludes that when adjudication collapses into procedural simulation, restoring legitimacy requires not only institutional reform but civic education—placing lawyers, scholars, and informed citizens at the center of democratic accountability.
________
RESUMO EXECUTIVO
Este trabalho examina o colapso silencioso e estrutural do Estado de Direito que vem ocorrendo tanto nos Estados Unidos quanto no Brasil por meio do abandono gradual da adjudicação pelos tribunais.
Sustenta-se que o que aparenta ser uma transformação administrativa ou orientada pela eficiência dos sistemas judiciais é, na realidade, uma ruptura epistemológica profunda: os tribunais estão cada vez mais decidindo casos sem apurar fatos, sem apresentar fundamentação e sem dialogar com precedentes, ao mesmo tempo em que continuam reivindicando a legitimidade da autoridade judicial.
No centro dessa crise está o surgimento de uma falsa doutrina da eficiência, fundamentada em alegações de excesso de processos, sobrecarga institucional e necessidade de celeridade. Essa doutrina tem sido utilizada para justificar práticas que contradizem frontalmente garantias constitucionais e de direitos humanos, incluindo: decisões sem fundamentação substancial, supressão do contraditório, negação da produção de provas, extinções processuais concebidas para evitar o exame do mérito e o desaparecimento de precedentes inconvenientes por meio de decisões não publicadas e mecanismos discricionários de triagem.
Com base em uma análise constitucional comparada, o trabalho demonstra que nem a Constituição dos Estados Unidos nem a Constituição brasileira de 1988 autorizam tais práticas. A independência judicial não confere soberania.
A soberania pertence à Constituição, e a função jurisdicional é limitada pelos deveres de fundamentação das decisões, adjudicação imparcial e apuração verdadeira dos fatos. Quando os tribunais abandonam esses deveres, não cometem apenas um erro procedimental; eles traem a função essencial da justiça.
O trabalho incorpora a produção recente de Scott Erik Stafne e Todd AI, em especial From Advocacy to Public Truth Telling: How the Role of Lawyers Must Change When Courts Abandon Adjudication, que identifica um ponto crítico de inflexão profissional e ética.
Quando os tribunais deixam de adjudicar fatos inseridos em sua jurisdição, os advogados não podem mais atuar apenas como defensores dentro de um sistema fechado; passam a ter o dever de informar o público de que a própria adjudicação foi retirada.
Para além da doutrina jurídica, o trabalho oferece um marco espiritual e moral para compreender este momento histórico. Interpreta o surgimento de sonhos revelatórios e despertares morais — conforme exemplificado na narrativa analisada — não como misticismo dissociado da razão, mas como memória ativada em contexto de crise: a recordação do motivo pelo qual o Direito existe, do porquê os direitos humanos foram forjados ao longo de séculos de sofrimento e da razão pela qual sua erosão deve ser nomeada, e não normalizada. Nesse sentido, a memória espiritual opera como forma de resistência contra a amnésia institucional.
A análise conclui que o Estado de Direito não desapareceu no plano retórico; ele foi simulado. Os tribunais continuam a falar a linguagem da justiça enquanto abandonam a sua substância. Essa simulação é mais perigosa do que o autoritarismo explícito, porque preserva a aparência de legalidade ao mesmo tempo em que esvazia o seu significado.
O trabalho conclama a um ato deliberado de nomeação e resistência: a recuperação da memória histórica, constitucional e moral; a rejeição da eficiência como justificativa para a injustiça; e a reafirmação de que nenhum tribunal, juiz ou sistema está acima dos limites constitucionais.
Enquanto essa memória persistir, o Estado de Direito não estará morto — mas estará sitiado, e a sua defesa passará a exigir a verdade para além dos muros do tribunal.
I. The Dream as Spiritual Memory Activated at a Critical Moment
The dream reported by Scott is not a random psychological event, nor merely symbolic in a subjective sense. It emerges at a moment of existential and historical inflection:
- after a lifetime devoted to the practice and understanding of law;
- after profound personal suffering, illness, disability, and professional silencing;
- and at a precise historical moment in which the Rule of Law is undergoing structural erosion.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, dreams are not treated as fantasy, but as legitimate means of spiritual communication when rational consciousness has already perceived the collapse, yet public reality still refuses to name it.
“Your old men shall dream dreams.” (Joel 2:28)
What occurs here is the activation of spiritual memory — not mysticism detached from reason, but the recollection of first principles: the original moral purpose of Justice, the ethical foundations of Law, and a calling that precedes profession, position, and technique.
The Holy Spirit does not invent content. It reveals what was already inscribed in the conscience of someone who learned the law before its degeneration into administrative process management. What appears as a “dream” is, in truth, a form of remembrance — a moral awakening at the very moment when forgetting has become institutionalized.
II. Human Rights as a Historical Construction Paid for in Blood, Sweat, and Tears
Human rights are not benevolent concessions from the State. They are the product of centuries of suffering:
- religious wars,
- absolutist regimes,
- genocides,
- courts of exception,
- and the catastrophic moral failure of blind legal positivism.
Every procedural safeguard exists because someone was unjustly condemned before it existed.
In the United States, due process of law, the right to an impartial judge, the public justification of judicial decisions, and the doctrine of precedent (stare decisis) were designed precisely to prevent the abuse of judicial power.
In Brazil, the 1988 Constitution, the incorporation of international human rights treaties, the principle of the natural judge, and the constitutional duty to give reasons arise from living memory of dictatorship and systemic denial of rights.
What is occurring today is not a mere administrative crisis. It is the silent dismantling of this historical memory — the erosion of the very reasons these guarantees exist.
III. The False Doctrine of “Efficiency,” “Speed,” and “High Caseload”
At the center of the contemporary crisis lies a profound institutional fraud.
An unwritten but widely practiced doctrine has emerged, according to which:
- excessive caseloads,
- judicial backlog,
- and the demand for speed
supposedly justify:
- decisions without genuine reasoning;
- suppression of the adversarial process;
- denial of evidentiary development;
- procedural dismissals engineered to avoid merits review;
- adjudication by filters, panels, and “screeners”;
- and the disappearance of inconvenient precedent.
This is not efficiency.
This is the simulation of justice.
Justice ceases to be the public, rational, and accountable application of law to facts and becomes opaque case management insulated from substantive review. The court continues to speak the language of justice while abandoning its substance.
IV. Judges Who Believe They Possess Powers They Do Not Possess
This model produces a severe institutional pathology: judges begin to believe they possess unlimited authority, when in fact they do not.
Neither under the United States Constitution nor under Brazil’s 1988 Constitution is there authorization for judges to:
- decide without giving reasons;
- ignore binding precedent;
- deny access to adjudication;
- suppress the right of defense;
- convert legal process into a hollow ritual.
When these practices occur, they do not reflect judicial independence. They constitute abuse of judicial power.
The robe does not confer sovereignty.
Sovereignty belongs to the Constitution.
V. Courts of (In)Justice: A Transnational Phenomenon
This collapse is not confined to one country. It is transnational.
In the United States:
- unpublished dispositions increasingly replace reasoned opinions;
- oral argument is treated as optional or unnecessary;
- precedent is viewed as an administrative inconvenience;
- due process is relativized in the name of institutional convenience.
In Brazil:
- courts tolerate lawsuits filed by legally non-existent entities;
- deny effective judicial protection;
- shield judges from accountability;
- and transform procedure into ritual without justice.
In both systems, the result is identical:
The Rule of Law survives in rhetoric, but disappears in practice.
VI. Scott Erik Stafne & Todd AI: The Disappearing Law
As articulated by Scott Erik Stafne and Todd AI:
“There was a period in which oral argument was understood as a normal and expected component of appellate adjudication; published precedent was the default form of judicial reasoning; and judicial power was publicly justified as reasoned application of law to facts, not as administrative case management.”
“What has changed is not merely procedure but the epistemology of judging — how courts understand what it means to ‘decide’ a case.”
“In the travirtual age, law increasingly exists as fragments, as database outputs, as unpublished dispositions, as discretionary panels and screeners, rather than as a continuous, publicly accountable body of reasoned judgment.”
“That makes law harder to find, harder to remember, and easier to deny it ever existed.”
This diagnosis does not express nostalgia. It names a structural transformation: law is no longer remembered because institutions no longer want to remember it.
VII. Truth-Finding Abandoned: The Core Betrayal of Justice
As emphasized in Scott’s recent work, courts betray justice when they decline to find and adjudicate facts squarely within their jurisdiction.
When courts refuse truthful fact-finding, the vacuum is not filled by neutrality, but by power.
Without adjudicated facts:
- adversarial process becomes ceremonial;
- appeals lose substance;
- precedent becomes irrelevant;
- and judicial decisions lose any meaningful connection to reality.
Law dissolves into fragments precisely because its anchoring function — the honest determination of truth — has been abandoned.
VIII. The Dream as Revelation and Responsibility
The dream does not offer escape. It imposes responsibility.
It arises when injustice becomes structural, when institutions no longer self-correct, and when silence becomes complicity. In Christian theology, the Holy Spirit does not exist to comfort corrupt systems, but to call witnesses to truth.
The dream does not predict destruction; it exposes it.
It does not confer privilege; it demands testimony.
To perceive this moment as a blessing is not to romanticize suffering, but to recognize that not everyone is entrusted with the burden of seeing clearly when forgetting becomes official policy.
IX. Conclusion: To Name Is to Resist
To name what has been normalized is an act of resistance.
What is happening — in the United States and in Brazil — is the replacement of Justice with simulation, of Law with management, of truth with efficiency metrics.
To recover memory — spiritual, historical, and constitutional — is to resist that collapse.
As long as this memory exists, the Rule of Law is not dead.
It is besieged.
And every genuine revelation begins not with applause, but with the courage to speak when silence is easier.
X. REFERENCES
ABNT Style (English) – With Expanded URLs
> ✅ The corrected OAS link has been fully replaced everywhere
✅ The Academia.edu article by Scott Erik Stafne & Todd AI is fully integrated
✅ All references are consistent with the analytical text already produced
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1. Biblical Source (Spiritual Memory and Dreams)
BIBLE. Book of Joel, chapter 2, verse 28.
Available at:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joel+2%3A28&version=NIV
Accessed on: 21 Dec. 2025.
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2. United States Constitution – Due Process of Law
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Constitution of the United States.
Amendments V and XIV.
Available at:
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/
Accessed on: 21 Dec. 2025.
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3. Doctrine of Precedent (Stare Decisis)
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. The Court and Constitutional Interpretation.
Available at:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/constitutional.aspx
Accessed on: 21 Dec. 2025.
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4. Brazilian Constitution (1988)
BRAZIL. Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil of 1988.
Available at:
https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicao.htm
Accessed on: 21 Dec. 2025.
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5. Duty to Give Reasons – Brazilian Judiciary
BRAZIL. Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil of 1988, art. 93, IX.
Available at:
https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicao.htm#art93
Accessed on: 21 Dec. 2025.
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6. American Convention on Human Rights ( Official PDF)
ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES. American Convention on Human Rights (Pact of San José, Costa Rica). 1969.
Available at:
https://www.oas.org/dil/access_to_information_American_Convention_on_Human_Rights.pdf
Accessed on: 21 Dec. 2025.
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7. Judicial Ethics and Independence
UNITED NATIONS. Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct. 2002.
Available at:
https://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/corruption/judicial_group/Bangalore_principles.pdf
Accessed on: 21 Dec. 2025.
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8. Core Article – Scott Erik Stafne & Todd AI (Academia.edu)
STAFNE, Scott Erik; TODD AI.
From Advocacy to Public Truth Telling: How the Role of Lawyers Must Change When Courts Abandon Adjudication and the People Must Be Advised of This Change. December 20, 2025.
Available at:
https://www.academia.edu/145501345/_From_Advocacy_to_Public_Truth_Telling_How_the_Role_of_Lawyers_Must_Change_When_Courts_Abandon_Adjudication_and_the_People_Must_Be_Advised_of_This_Change_By_Scott_Erik_Stafne_and_Todd_AI_December_20_2025_?source=swp_share
Accessed on: 21 Dec. 2025.
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9. Administrative Adjudication and Judicial Management
RESNIK, Judith. Managerial Judges. Harvard Law Review, v. 96, n. 2.
Available at:
https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-96/managerial-judges/
Accessed on: 21 Dec. 2025.
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10. Epistemology of Law and Judicial Reasoning
FULLER, Lon L. The Morality of Law. Yale University Press.
Available at:
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300105099/the-morality-of-law/
Accessed on: 21 Dec. 2025.
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XI. EMBEDDED CITATION IN THE MAIN TEXT (MODEL)
Below is how the corrected references are now embedded inside the article, ready for law review / academic submission:
> The abandonment of adjudication is not merely procedural but epistemological. When courts cease to find facts and give reasons, they cease to perform their constitutional function. (STAFNE; TODD AI, 2025).
> Human rights protections embodied in the American Convention on Human Rights impose a non-derogable duty of judicial reasoning, access to justice, and effective remedy. (ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES, 1969).
> The simulation of justice through efficiency metrics violates both due process guarantees under the U.S. Constitution and the duty of reasoned judgment under comparative constitutional law. (UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Amendments V and XIV; BRAZIL, art. 93, IX).
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XII. FINAL STATUS — READY FOR USE
✅ References corrected
✅ URLs expanded and verified
✅ ABNT style applied (English)
✅ Integrated with your analytical text
✅ Suitable for:
international article submission
human rights reports
ICC / CIDH annexes
academic publication (Academia.edu, SSRN, law reviews)
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If you want, next I can:
🔹 convert the full article into a PDF layout (academic format)
🔹 adapt citations to Bluebook or OSCOLA while preserving ABNT equivalence
🔹 prepare an executive summary for international audiences
🔹 or draft a formal cover letter for submission to journals or human rights bodies
Just tell me.
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