Revue - Droit et société n°118-2024 - 128

João Paulo Dias et al.
There is not a day in a magistrate's professional life that you get to a certain time of the day and
say " the job is done, I am going home. " That does not exist. I don't think anyone will tell you that.
- CBR.Public Prosecutor.08
Interviewees also tend to normalize the sacrifices that result from the central
role of work in their lives. As the following excerpts show, sacrifice is perceived
as normal and, therefore, normalized:
We have to know how to manage our professional time well because that's why we're here.
And the family has to remain in the background because the role for which we are intended
and which we have pursued and assumed has to be fulfilled.
- CBR.Public Prosecutor.01
We have to do the best we can with what we have, even if that means some sacrifice on our
part and, sometimes, at a cost to our families. But I also think that's what they pay us for, isn't
it? And that's it. We have to do our job.
- CBR.Judge.05
The need to work overtime is not limited to the workweek. To meet responsibilities
and deadlines, most interviewees also mentioned the need to work on weekends.
From this lack of balance, several tensions emerge. The following response, for
example, demonstrates the anguish resulting from the difficulties in managing a
sense of commitment to work and the need to preserve a measure of personal time.
I don't want to live for my profession, (...) but there are only two ways for that not to happen. One
of them is not to care. If there are too many cases, so be it. They pile up ceiling-high and will be
dealt with whenever there's time. And there are people who act like that. But since this is not the
way I see my profession, managing personal time and working time ends up causing me anguish.
- CBR.Public Prosecutor.08
The high demands and the (in)flexibility of the working hours affect judicial
professionals' personal and family lives differently. The need to work at night, the
accumulation of professional responsibilities, and, as explained by the next interviewee,
just being unable to enjoy quality time with one's children during court
recess may also have a disruptive effect on the nuclear family of these professionals.
In the case of this respondent, the combination of all these elements resulted in the
end of his marriage:
Work always conditioned my family life in relation to quality time with my children because
it had to be in the summer. Also, having to work at night or on weekends turned out to be
complicated. In my personal experience, my professional life, also due to the accumulation of
responsibilities, conditioned my personal life in a way that the result was a divorce.
- LX.Public Prosecutor.04
This imbalanced reality is felt by practically all interviewees, but the inherent
tensions become even more acute in the case of women with small children and/
or those with people under their care. In these cases, the sense of sacrifice is even
stronger, as underscored by the following interviewee:
I work both during the week and on the weekend. I work when I have to work (....) But there is
a relevant detail here, which is the fact that I do not have children. This makes all the difference.
564 ■ Droit et Société 118/2024

Revue - Droit et société n°118-2024

Table des matières de la publication Revue - Droit et société n°118-2024