Ana Laura is a Brazilian legal scholar and constitutional law professor specializing in judicial politics, the institutional design of supreme courts, and democratic governance. She serves as a faculty member at the Getulio Vargas Foundation Law School in São Paulo (FGV Direito SP) and Insper, while maintaining active research affiliations with prominent public law analysis groups. She earned her Bachelor of Laws, Master’s degree, and Ph.D. in State Law from the University of São Paulo (USP), which included a doctoral research fellowship at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Her core academic agenda centers on the decision-making patterns, docket management, and institutional legitimacy of the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court (STF). She has contributed rigorous empirical studies examining how constitutional courts navigate political polarization, manage executive pressures, and defend constitutional frameworks during periods of democratic stress. Notably, she has collaborated on empirical papers analyzing the top court’s behavior alongside other leading public law scholars at FGV and the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP). She investigates how legal mechanisms and procedural technicalities are manipulated within modern legal systems. She is also a recognized public voice in legal media, providing expert commentary on high-court ethics codes, judicial oversight, and institutional design reforms in Brazil.