THE SMELL OF LAW DECISIONS: OLFACTION IN BRAZILIAN SUPERIOR JUSTICE COURT O CHEIRO DAS DECISÕES JURÍDICAS: O OLFATO NO SUPERIOR TRIBUNAL DE JUSTIÇA BRASILEIRO

This paper aims to study the sense of smell and its importance to society, focusing on legal interpretations as a case to demonstrate the irritations between different social systems (science and law, mainly). Its general hypothesis is that some modern conceptions, even though dressed in all scientific and methodic appearance through centuries, are preconceptions biased by social interests; and these preconceptions based several paradigms of knowledge through times, being that Law reasoning in jurisprudence about smell has absorbed this socially constructed conceptions that are being denied by the most actual science. The research has used mainly three research methods: phenomenological-hermeneutical, historical-evolutive, and inductive; its approach is transdisciplinar, quantitative and qualitative. Its technique of research is bibliographical and documental.

CONTENTS: Introduction; 1 Function of the smell to human body and brain -2 From the importance to animalization: smell and its cultural meaning -3 The smell of Brazilian law order in jurisprudence -Conclusion -References.

INTRODUCTION
The human being is a conjunction between biological and psychic systems, which communicates with the society through the interpenetration of language (LUHMANN, 1995, p. 272). This last one has been significantly addressed, in law social theory, concerning to written, oral and visual language. However, other important senses for communicating (and understanding) of the world by the human being -such as the touch, the taste and the smell -has not been addressed that much.
Despite the scarce works about the smell in law social theory (SYNNOTT, 1991, p. 438) -maybe because of the disqualification Western scholars have constructed of the smell as being as expression of the animality since the 18th century (CORBIN, 2008, p. 337-338) -, much has been done about the senses in Social and Human Sciences. David Howes (2014, p. 10-26) traced a very detailed evolutionary line of sensory studies in History and Anthropology, for example, since the decade of 1980. And that is a proof that it may not only be possible to associate, in Law studies, the sense of smell and what is being juridically communicated about it, but also a very promising way of thinking the Law in the society: "law, through its conventional association with reason, has been seen as opposed to, or at least situated outside, the realm of senses -although very much involved in its regulation" (HOWES; CLASSEN, 2014, p. 93).
Studying the smell means to explore an extremely complex type of communication, doted of very differentiated nuances and pragmatic, semantic and syntactic attribution of senses. Olfactory sense starts with molecules with special attributes in the outside world, what make possible that these molecules interact with sensory receptors in the nose, sending specific nerve impulse-patterns to the brain -which compares the incoming signal with other signal-patterns memorized and, depending upon whether or not it can find a matching pattern, assigns a meaning to the signal and decides on the most appropriate response (WRIGHT, 1982).
Practically every productive human activity (crafting, industrial and agricultural producing, mining, trading, etc.) that minimally involves a chemical reaction or a little stronger physical phenomenon will cause some aroma. Moreover, several living species communicate their intentions and behaviors through smell -specifically, through exhalation of pheromones, chemical substances that flow in the air from one individual to other, in order to produce a certain hormonal or behavioral reaction (marking territory, informing that is disposable to coupling, etc.) (HALPERN; MARTINEZ-MARCOS, 2003, p. 245-318). When human behavior is analyzed, it is clear that human techniques explore the production of certain smells as a way to communicate something to others. The memory evoked by smell is much more linked to the emotions than to consciousness (although one thing does not excludes absolutely the other).
The main goal of this work is to study the sense of smell and its importance to society, focusing on legal interpretations as a case to demonstrate the irritations between different social systems. To achieve this goal, the article was divided into three sections. The first one has the specific goal of showing what is the olfaction in human brain and psyche, according to the most current scientific discoveries. The second one, by its turn, shows that olfaction not only has a historical and cultural meaning, but also, that Modernity distorted its meaning in a non scientific way. And finally, after discussing on an autopoietical theory of Law decisions, the third one studies the jurisprudence of a specific important Court (Brazilian Superior Justice Court, or Superior Tribunal de Justiça, STJ, originally), in order to demonstrate that this modern preconceptions still take part on the decisional process nowadays.
The research question that provoked initially this work can be described in this sense: in what way(s) conceptions formulated during the advent of Modernity about the sense of smell (or olfaction) can be observed in the jurisprudence of a Court? The general hypothesis for that question is that some modern conceptions, even though dressed in all scientific and methodic appearance through centuries, are preconceptions biased by social interests; and these preconceptions based several paradigms of knowledge through times, being that Law reasoning in jurisprudence about smell has absorbed this socially constructed conceptions that are being denied by the most actual science.
This research has used mainly three research methods: for the first item, a phenomenological-hermeneutical research was conducted, focused on the medical and psychological function of the smell; in relation to the second item, a historical-evolutive and anthropological research was conducted in order to understand the importance of the smell in the society; and in its third item, the research has used an inductive method, as all the possibilities of usage of "smell" and synonyms by the Brazilian Superior Court were studied and interpreted with all the theoretical framework built in the two precedent points.
Its approach is transdisciplinar, as sources from many sciences and fields of research (Neuroscience, Psychology, Social Sciences and Law, mainly) were studied in order to understand how the olfaction functions in the human being. But it is also quantitative (as a significant number of decisions on the matter is studied) and qualitative (because of the importance of the interpretations given to collected data).
Its technique of research is bibliographical and documental. Focusing on the jurisprudence research, an online survey at Brazilian Superior Court of Justice (Superior Tribunal de Justiça in Portuguese) website was done, being used the terms cheiro ("scent", in English), odor (a synonym to "scent" in Portuguese), olfato e faro (words in Portuguese that designates "olfaction", "the sense of smell", being the last one used more when related to a dog's sense of smell, for example). 1 No initial and final chronological terms were imposed, but only the type of decision called acórdão (a judgement made by a collegiate organ of the Court, which represent the final decision on an appeal made to that court, and which is the last important decision made by STJ, on matters that do not verse about Brazilian Constitution directly).
These methodological choices can be easily justified here. In first place, a research with a good degree of abstraction and profoundness on smell in jurisprudence has to start with the understanding of a sense for human being. Secondly, it has to show cultural and social contextualization of this sense (as it is not only a subjective experience). And in third place, a good historical and geographical delimitation has to be done with the case to be studied, giving the research precision, contextualization and possibilities of future comparisons with other contexts.

FUNCTION OF THE SMELL TO HUMAN BODY AND BRAIN
The olfactory bulb is closer to brain structures responsible for emotions and long-term memory -what means that olfactory sense provokes emotions and older memories faster than other senses, which has to pass through the thalamus before; and the olfactory bulb is also part of the so-called limbic system, a group of structures which support the brain work in areas such as emotions, behavior, motivation and long-term memory (SHAW, 2017, p. 58-59). Maybe this is why smells have unusual evocative characters, as well as the immediate attraction or repulsion to them. 1 Seven decisions of Brazilian Superior Court (Superior Tribunal de Justiça) were found that the word "smell", although it appears in the text of the decision, is not fundamental to the question. These were the described decisions: Crying babies who were separated from their mothers stopped crying if someone could expose them to clothes recently used by their genitor (SULLIVAN;TOUBAS, 1998, p. 402-408). That could mean that not only biologically a smell can have functions, but also, that the first important social interaction between mother and son has a bond that passes fundamentally by the meaning of safeness that smell can have to babies. Moreover, since 1983 at least it has been shown that mothers who had only a brief contact with their newborns after a cesarean surgery were able to recognize their smells through only one t-shirt used by the baby, for example (PORTER; CERNOCH; MACLAUGHLIN, 1983, p. 151-154).
But not only for connections between people in order to give a recognition communication that links people since the early life the smell works: it also functions to give cultural parameters for rejecting the other. Smells that denote membership of an individual in a group promote cohesion of the collectivity, but also can alienate the different ones: that is why odors become an instrument and a justification, many times, for social, racial and moral rejection (LE GUÉRER, 1993, p. 27-30).
Attributing a meaning to smell involves, therefore, language -and language is doubly contingent: even when the emitter does not intend to produce an olfactive meaning with his/her emission, he/she can probably doing it -and this outcome will depend on both the recipient's perception and his/her (often affective) memory. Language […] functions in psychic systems without communication. Its true function lies in generalizing meaning with the help of symbols that -rather than designate something else -are themselves what they perform. Only in its function as a means of communication -which, from the viewpoint of evolution, seems to have been its original function -is language bound to coding, and thus to acoustic or optical signs for meaning (LUHMANN, 1995, p. 94). Although it becomes clear by the reading of the previous excerpt, social systems theory has focused itself in the relationship between language and oral/written symbols; but it is also clear that: i) it was not excluded the possibility of generalizing meanings according to other subtracts of language, such as chemical or physical means: sound is a physical mechanical waveand writing depends also on chemical phenomena; ii) every symbolic generalization has meanings not only in communicative systems, but also in psychical ones -as it happens also to the attribution of meaning to chemical signs on the environment.
Communicating the availability to reproduction in several species, for example, is a very important function of smell. Pheromones are well-known substances used to this purpose. In this sense, Burton (1976, p. 111-112) also said that women are sensitive to substances that have musky odor -which, by their turn, are used as pheromones by male mammals of various species, and related to the male hormone, testosterone; moreover, that sensitiveness seems to increase during the period of ovulation in women. In addition, it was reported that the highest oestradiol and the lower progesterone levels were measured, the more attractive women's bodies were rated in research (LOBMAIER et al., 2018).
In this sense, producing a smell does not depends only on the intention of the one who does it -and several times, even when he/she intended to outcome with a specific meaning, the receiver maybe receives it in a totally diverse way. Back to the exemple of preparing food, the greatest chef of the world could cook the best beef, with the best receipt; but if a vegetarian feel the complex smell of the dish, he/she can not only find it repulsive, but it can also remember him/her of the conceptions and traumas that made him/her choose this kind of diet. Engen (1989, p. 85) has studied for several years the relations between odor and cognitive memory, and posed that coming as odor is something very problematic, because there is no "universal" connection between a smell and a name (as it happens to colors, for example) -proving that naming smells involves different semantic system. In his studies, it was found that while sight and other senses starts as functional ones, but turn into category differentiated with the age, smelling continues with its functional nomination. A good example of this is given by the author: […] Children define an orange as something to eat. It is not until they are about seven or eight years old that more abstract ways of describing category membership, such as "an orange is a fruit", become evident in their language. But we continue to name odors according to their functions as adults, when our descriptions of sights and sounds have changed (ENGEN, 1989, p. 85). This was complemented by Degel (2000, p. 23), who analyzed the relationships between odor and implicit memory. In this sense, differently to what occurs to other senses like audition and vision, olfaction is a purely "nominative" one. But this is not exactly something that would pose olfactory perception as something poorer: recognizing the familiarity in a more immediate way seems to indicate that one of the main functions of the sense of smell is to perform as a warning system against dangerous factors in the surrounding air or in edible food.
However, this nominative character of smell has been proven as being a factor relative to the language that is spoken: English native speakers, for example, struggle when describing abstractly a smell (having to refer to the source of the smell almost uniquely), but there are some people from Thailand and Malay (Jahai and Aslian, respectively) who have a vast lexicon of abstract terms to abstractly describe smell (MAJID; BURENHULT, 2014, p. 266-270). By the way, this characteristic of having a vaster vocabulary to define smell abstractly has been more related to hunter-gatherers, when compared to agricultural and industrial peoples (MAJID; KRUSPE, 2018, p. 409-413).
Besides this consideration of a purely nominative character of smell sense, there are some other important considerations about smelling and memory. For example, it has been proved that, contrary to what happens to other senses (such as sight and hearing), smelling does not cue false memories, but only veridical ones (TAMMINES; MEBUDE, 2018). It would be possible that odor cue only to veridical memory is that, when compared to other sensory modalities, the olfactory input has a direct access to the hippocampus (which is a key to representation of veridical memories) SAIVE; ROYET; PLAILLY, 2014, p. 240); false memories, by their turn, arise in the temporal pole, where it is believed that abstract semantic knowledge are stores (CHADWICK, 2016, p. 10180-10185). Moreover, it has been also proven by science that olfactory cues are better than visual ones for triggering autobiographical memories (DE BRUIJN;BENDER, 2018, p. 547-558).
"The more familiar a person think an odor is, the more likable it is judged" (MARTIN, 2013, p. 38). And this is reinforced by the argument presented by Vroon et al. (1994, p. 86-87), who wrote that it is obvious the appreciation of smell: it is used to prefer certain kinds of certain plants or foods and to dislike the rotten or smelling like feces (which could infect someone through contact), and to make it easier for men to recognize familiar smells in the environment (what can help structuring the surroundings).

FROM THE IMPORTANCE TO ANIMALIZATION: SMELL AND ITS CULTURAL MEANING
The importance of the sense of smell, as well as of the odors, has changed over time. Classen, Howes and Synnott (1994, p. 31) describe the importance of smell during life and after life to ancient Egyptians; the pleasure ancient Greeks and Romans had from intense sweet smells that no modern man could bear nowadays; the initial repulse that the first fathers of Christian Church had in relation to incense burning because of its association to pagan rituals (substituted posteriorly with the belief that there would be aromas associated to sanctity); the relationship between the withdrawal of miasmas of plagues and good scents in Middle Ages; and the revolution on sanitation and smell that walked besides Industrial and Urban Revolutions in the concerns for human and industrial waste that could cause diseases in cities (CLASSEN; HOWES; SYNNOTT, 1994, p. 13-92). Finally, the moral that science of sanitization imposed by the 19th century made sight overcome smell (CLASSEN; HOWES; SYNNOTT, 1994, p. 84): there was a significantly scientific preference for visual elements and tools, such as maps, microscopes and money, to the detriment of fragrant ones during those days -as well as the identification of smell as the sense of savages and animals (which are deprecated and exploited by western culture).
But it is also interesting to analyze what Social and Human sciences have researched on non-Western cultures and the meaning of smell. Time, space and people are measured, perceived and classified by a complex relationship between the senses in other cultures, having the smell an importance that decayed in the West since the 1800s.
The Andaman Islanders (Burma) built their calendar on the basis of a cycle of plant flowering scents, and they also differentiate the space where fragrant flowers grows (inlands) from those where the smell is salty (the shorelines) -and this perception is not a static one as it occurs in Western perception of space, as the smell of flowering depends on varying growth; the Dassanetch (Ethiopia) also have a calendar based on the cycle of scents -but, in their case, it is not the smell of flowers, but of fields burning (dry season) plants blooming (wet season). The Umeda (New Guinea), by their turn, calculate the distance not by the sight, but by the distance of a smell (as their culture make their olfactive sense extremely accurate). The Desana (Colombian Amazon) identify the territory occupied by a tribe through words that mean something like a place that has the tribe odor -as tribes are characterized by them according to the food they eat (and each kind of food exhales a typical scent); they also have moral, botanical and zoological systems based on smells. The Suya and the Bororo (both from Brazil) and the Serer Ndut (Senegal) built their systems of classes (of men, plants and animals) based on different types of smell (CLASSEN, 1993, p. 95-105).
The language of the Maniq, a nomadic hunter-gatherers people living in southern Thailand, is strongly based on smell, having it as an important reference point in a number of areas of life, such as medicinal practices and rituals, hunting, avoiding risks, etc. with a very abstract lexicon (or else, they do not express a smell simply referring to its source, as it happens in English language, for example) (WNUK; MAJID, 2014, p. 134). This capability of abstraction of smell language also happens to the Jahai people, hunter-gatherers from the Malay Peninsula (MAJID et al., 2018, p. 1-8).
Many cultures use odors as symbolically marks for classifying beings. The attractiveness/repulsiveness in olfactory experience turns scent into a very useful symbolic vehicle for categorizing according to cultural values, as well as investing classificatory systems with emotive power. The repugnancy of a kind of odor, for example, can reproduce the immediate physical repealing a society demands for a specific class or group of people. In this sense, characterizing a group as bad smelling is to make it repulsive or fragrant is to classify it at a very basic physical and emotional level (CLASSEN, 1993, p. 101). And these culturally constructed parameters for inclusion or exclusion serve as a basis not only for politically creating norms, but also, for jurisdiction about them.
Jurisdictions of smell can be exercised through legal and cultural frameworks of regulatory knowledge that are tempered according to normative notions of reasonableness. In this way, the normativity of reasonableness reflects cultural expectations that may be communicated through law. Law may regulate, control, and govern, but also constitutively reflect the culture of smell in which certain smellers are more powerful than others. Additionally, certain smells are less acceptable than other smells when present in public spaces. In public settings, smell marginalizes through associations with lack of personal hygiene, disregard for community standards, or simply not belonging. In these spaces, smell, or better yet, the right not to smell, is the extension of personal space to which rights frameworks are attached. In this way, the somatic notion of right extends beyond the body to that which the body can smell and receive those smells that bodies emit. We don't experience smell equally, and through smell, neither do we experience law or inclusion in community equally as well (MARUSEK, 2015, p. 36).
Hierarchies between people (physical, moral, economic, etc.), as well as measurement of time and space are important basis for legal cultures -and Western cultures, although may have formulated moral judgements and prejudices between classes related to smell (the smell of the working classes; the smell of poor; the smell of people of other places and races -or as it was put by George Orwell, "four frightful words… The lower classes smell") (1937, p. 159), may seem to follow an absence of smell in legal cultures. But prejudices associated with the cosmetically practices, food and professional activities were, in the dusk of Modernity, used as factor to attribute a certain rank (low or high, according to the context), to cultures and races who smelled in a certain way -this is shown about Native American, African, Chinese and, mainly, Jewish in texts written by British people 18th and 19th century (TULLETT, 2016, p. 318). "[…] There was a shift in the way that smell, beginning in the late nineteenth century, [that] was used to not simply demarcate groups but, in addition, to supposedly detect 'race' and ethnicity" (SMITH, 2012, p. 381).
Sovereignty is based on territory, which is put on maps based on (visual) meters, as well as estate property. Life expectancy is measured in countable years, months, hours, secondswhich can be seen clockwise -as it occurs with the payment for labor: by time or by (countable) pieces. "Formerly power was personal, and therefore imbued with the smell of those who wielded it; now it has become impersonal and abstract, and therefore odorless" (CLASSEN; HELD; SYNNOTT, 1994, p. 161).
A decline of the sense of smell (and of all the non-visual senses) in modern Western culture may reveal not only a change in senses preferences, but mainly a shift in cultural and conceptual paradigms -and this was due the principal influence of the Enlightenment, which started influencing that paradigm by the second half of the eighteenth century (CLASSEN, 1993, p. 27): John Locke's Essay on Human Understanding emphasizes on the visual basis of mental activity (ONG, 1967, p. 66-68); René Descartes works also endorsed sight as the most important sense for technology and science (SYNNOTT, 1991, p. 70). Condillac (1930, p. xxxi) pointed out that "of all the senses it is the one which appears to contribute least to the cognitions of the human mind". Darwin (1874, p. 17) considered it it to be 'of extremely slight service", and for Kant (2006, p. 50) it was 'the most dispensable" of the senses.
Moreover, even the scientific understanding that poses human olfaction as being poorer than in other mammal species, for example, is a myth. It derives from a non-empirical hypothesis formulated by French anatomist and anthropologist Paul Broca, whose work had a lot of influence during 19th century (MACGANN, 2017). A chain of misunderstandings and exaggerations about the size of human olfactory bulb, such as its position in the brain and its size when comparing to other mammals, made the physician conclude that these facts would make olfaction an opposite of free will in human beings. Those mistakes were reproduced as true facts by Sigmund Freud during the following decades, basing lots of his work about human olfaction and psychoanalysis.
But lately science has shown that the human capability about olfaction must be evaluated not only in relation to other mammals capabilities, but according to other parameters. In other words, the primate olfactory system is highly sensitiveto many odors and can be strongly influential on emotions, physiology and behavior when properly tested(SCHAAL; PORTER, 1991, p 135-199;SEIBT;WEBER, 2000, p. 47-53;LASKA et al., 2005, p. 302-311;SHEPHERD, 2004, p. 572-575). Different species have different sensitivities to different odorants, and when it concerns to human primates, our behavior is strongly influenced by olfaction -being that environmental can access specific memories and emotions, influence autonomic nervous system activation, shape perceptions of stress, prompt approach and avoidance (MACGANN, 2017, p. 4).
It is undeniable the influence of the Enlightenment theorization to legal culture in Western countries: constitutionalism, fundamental rights, tripartition of power, security and safeness, as well as the main importance of rationality are only some basilar examples one could quote. And this shift from synthesis to analysis that is represented by the shift from the importance of smell to sight (ONG, 1967, p. 74) may be verified: the importance of written (and pressed) text to Law, as well as the authority shift -from the person to the text -also reveal that.
Also in architecture it is seen, nowadays, that the aromatic dimension of built structures has been neglected in architectural theory -even thought "the effects created by odoriferous materials, ventilated scents and other wafting perceptions can significantly influence one's experience of a structure" (DROBNICK, 2005, p. 265). Of course, the structure described there is about an artificial building: Law is an artificial structure too, but it is immaterial, untouchable (yet a Law decision will cause lots of touches, scents, or privations of them). So what is the smell of the Law system? It could be said that Law, of course, has no physical smell, but there are communications Law makes of the physical sense of smell, providing a sense that is expressed in its propositions and decisions.

THE SMELL OF BRAZILIAN LAW ORDER IN JURISPRUDENCE
Social systems such as Politics, Religion, Economy, Science, Law, etc., are autopoieticthey produce and reproduce their own elements by the interaction of its elements (TEUBNER, 1987, p. 3). Theories of autopoiesis are inspired in new discoveries in general systems theory in Biology, which poses that biological systems "[…] are characterized by a circular, recursive, selfreferential mode of operation", and this has dethroned the subject in its claim to be the unique referentiality (LUHMANN, 1988(LUHMANN, -1989. In this sense, an autopoietic system's performance is based only in its own predecessor operations. They are also functional systems -each social system constitutes itself in view of its own function. "The function is a problem that has to be solved at the level of the societal system […]. Hence, autonomy is not a desired goal but a fateful necessity" (LUHMANN, 1990, p. 228). In this sense, legal norms "are a structure of symbolically generalized expectations" (LUHMANN, 2004, p. 146), being that Law uses counterfactually stabilized expectations (LUHMANN, 2004, p. 147); hence, the function of Law is stabilizing counterfactual expectations in society.
Law cannot guarantee, of course, that these expectations will not be disappointed. But it can guarantee that they can be maintained, as expectations, even in case of disappointment, and that one can know this and communicate in advance. From the sociological point of view, then, normatively is nothing but counterfactual stability. To formulate this differently: in that it protects expectations, the law frees us from the demand that we learn from disappointments and adjust to them. It thereby holds out the prospect of resolving conflicts […], for it contains a preliminary decision (however unclear it may be in the individual case) about who has to learn from disappointment and who does not (LUHMANN, 1988(LUHMANN, -1989 In this sense, Law not only imposes a social order; it not only organizes the violence of the State face to the society. These are all expressions of a "should be" based on what is communicated by a certain system used by professionals in solving conflicts based on what is expected of behaviors, even if the social experience shows that these norms are not being respected. Sociologically, Law would be like a social memory of what should and what should not be in social relations, even when socially the facts disappoint this "should" formula. This is because there is a paradox of self-reference of Law in the most profound logic of the system, as it bases its present decision on its own past operations of selection. The system, in this sense, builds itself during each operation based on its own past operations (its program), formed by the application of a logical code (legal/illegal, when we analyze Law's code) posed by itself. Thus, everything that is not the system is its environment, and the system is closed in its operational logic, but highly dependent on its environment cognitivelly. Hence, Law system has a function, which is reflected in its structures (norms) -and its acts reflect the operations of the system. But the Law can also accept irritations of its environment, changing its norms -but it must be emphasized here that Law only changes when it is meaningful to Law, as only the system can (re)produce itself (LUHMANN, 1988(LUHMANN, -1989. There are juridical decisions which simply reproduce predecessor operations of the system, with no innovations (but only redundancy, confirmation of decisions from the past) (LUHMANN, 2005). But there are systemic decisions that innovate past operations, producing variation, introducing a difference into the system -being also argumentatively justified from past decisions (as it must be tolerated inside the system), but created primarily (PEREIRA; SIMIONI, 2009, p. 6506).
The positiveness of Law makes it an operatively closed system, but it is cognitively open because its decisions are directed to problems of the entire society (the environment of the system), which is translated to systemic elements (norms, acts, precedents, doctrine, etc.) (PEREIRA; SIMIONI, 2009, p. 6507). Then, Law needs an external reference to complete the lack of possibility of decision -a logical value that comes from the environment to complete the juridical argumentation (LUHMANN, 2004).
Besides all that decline of importance of smell in Western culture (also regarding Western Law), it does not mean Law cannot give a meaning to smell in its operations: it can be the external reference introduce in the system during the decision in order to make a judicial decision possible (even when it needs to be created). An analysis of what can be signified by a law order may clarify -and even help criticizing -what a specific sense means in practical decisions of a social system. [...] The nose is used to distinguish legality from illegality, reasonableness from nuisance, and norm from deviance. In this way, the nose works to embody and instill a social and cultural response to normativity within a positivist framework of smell and polity. The smells of legality and illegality (such as those relating to alcohol, drunkenness, and marijuana smoke) heighten the sensory management of public space (through breathing, bodies, and odor) as legal methods through which social governance and cultural normativity relate to local ordinances and other forms of olfactorybased regulations (MARUSEK, 2015, p. 33-34).

Revista de Direito Brasileira
Analyzing the jurisprudence of Brazilian Superior Court (STJ), it has to be pointed that bad smell, among other unhealthy factors, due to overcrowding of prison, is considered a factor of offense to the dignity of the human person (BRASIL, 2016c). 2 However, expert proof is demanded in Brazilian decisions in order to confirm bad smell decurrent from malpractices in institutions, be them destined to attend incarcerated adults, be them designed to attend children and adolescents -and the State may be considered liable for indemnify these torts, as in Brazil, for the welfare of these subjects is their responsibility of the State (BRASIL, 2017i). 3 Moreover, expert evidence is the basis not only for defining the area affected by bad smell caused by sewage, but also for indicating who is legitimated to sue for material and moral torts in that situation (BRASIL, 2017k). 4 By the way, the State is also civilly liable for damage to individual homogeneous interest arising from poor provision of public sewage treatment service, where bad smell and other unhealthy conditions will affect the well-being of the perpetrator -and expert evidence is fundamental to the definition of such unsanitary conditions (BRASIL, 2018a(BRASIL, , 2013a(BRASIL, , 2014b(BRASIL, , 2014c. 5 It is interesting to notice, in addition, that the same court does not consider as being a hypothesis of civil liability the founding of a human corpse in a public water reservoir when the specialist evidencing does not encounter alterations in odor, color or microbiological presence in that place (BRASIL, 2015b). 6 Furthermore, it has also been decided that when the expert evidence points that bad smell provoked by the installation of sewage plant does not depreciate a property (or does not cause any other inconvenience), there is no tort (BRASIL, 2012a). 7 And also, this liability is considered as a non-contractual one, being given that to the value of the indemnification of these torts must be added interest rates counted since the beginning of the tort (or else, the date when the odoriferous inconvenience started) (BRASIL, 2018j). 8 Specialist evidence is also fundamental when judging companies for crimes and civil liability related to air pollution when bad odors are emitted by factories (BRASIL, 1994(BRASIL, , 2017l, 2018d. 9 Concerning to drug traffic evidencing in Brazil, it has been decided that a strong smell of narcotic substances (found as such in expert evidence and/or police testimony) encountered among the belongings of a suspect, justify his/her provisional prison (BRASIL, 2017h) 10 or criminal prosecution (BRASIL, 2013b(BRASIL, , 2015c(BRASIL, , 2015d(BRASIL, , 2016b(BRASIL, , 2017f, 2017n, 2018c. 11 Sniffer dogs' olfaction is also accepted as means of proof for the presence of narcotic substances by Brazilian Superior Court, as it can be read in many of its decisions denying habeas corpus (BRASIL, 2012c(BRASIL, , 2014d. 12 But the indispensability of expert evidence is mitigated in cases of drunken driving, when the police presential examination by itself ( (BRASIL, 2016e, 2017m, 2017e, 2017b(BRASIL, 2016e, 2017m, 2017e, , 2017j, 2017d(BRASIL, 2016e, 2017m, 2017e, , 2017c(BRASIL, 2016e, 2017m, 2017e, , 2018b. 13 When analyzing decisions that dealt with the olfaction sense, it is interesting to notice that the referred Court considers that provoking accidents that occasion the loss of olfaction to the victims (which is proven, of course, by specialist evidencing) is a cause for civil liabilitymainly when the accident occurs between individuals (BRASIL, 2002). 14 And the indemnity value varies between 80,000 and 30,000 reais (Brazilian currency) (BRASIL, 2011(BRASIL, , 2016d. 15 When the loss of olfaction is related to the indemnification recurring from the compulsory vehicle insurance (called "DPVAT" in Brazil), which is managed by a company called Seguradora Líder, which has national capital participation, not only the loss of the sense has to be detected: this loss has to be related to a permanent labour incapability to the victim (BRASIL, 2012b). 16 But in demands related to the accident aid, a benefit paid by Brazilian Social Security, specialist evidencing has not only to testify that the loss of olfaction has occurred: this loss must be enough to put the plaintiff away permanently from work. This occurs in consequence of the Brazilian Statute of Social Security Benefits (Lei 8.213/1991) (BRASIL, 2016a). 17 It is also interesting to notice that a Decree (Decreto 8.468/76) enforced by the São Paulo State, one of the most important in Brazilian Federation, was considered illegal by the Superior Court because it had adopted, as a standard for measurement of environmental pollution, the olfaction of accredited personnel. It was decided this way mainly because the Court understood that an administrative act (a decree) cannot impose a penalty (in case, a fee) because of a norm that lacks objectivity -in this case, the interpretation of an emission as being pollution or not because someone has used a sense (olfaction) that is entirely subjective (BRASIL, 2003(BRASIL, , 1993. 18

CONCLUSION
In order to conclude this work, it is important to point out that current science has shown that several conceptions about human olfactive capability has changed significantly. This sense, that is still used, sometimes, to make an opposition between the human an animal species, in fact, is much more potent and meaningful to human body, brain and communication than the scientific common sense has insinuated, at least, since the advent of Modernity.
Scientific and other social considerations about smell and olfaction change historical and culturally -and this was shown during all the pages of this work. Perhaps the most significantly change of meaning on smell occurred during the modernity (understood as a contextually changing concept), when they gradually lost importance -in a way that was never scientifically true, despite all the rational pilots on which Western World has tried to show it structure. A rationality and a sociability built on instrumental reasoning and the sense of sight has imposed its predominance, but it can also be seen that they are not the only possible ones: alias, the more current use of rational observation in science has shown that. 13  After all this analysis, what can be observed in the jurisprudence of STJ, in first place, categorize olfaction as an important mean of communicating with the world, and also, as as important factor for characterizing human dignity in the environment. Law of Torts, Environment Law and Constitutional Law, when interpreted by STJ, enforce indemnifications, penalties and considerations about olfaction, often considering the disrespect of it as a significant illegality.
Olfaction is an important mean of evidencing, being used to detect the occurrence of illegalities -but perhaps in a biased way, as sometimes the lack of rationality affects the considerations about the official use of smell: for illicit drugs, trained dogs and specialist evidencing; for alcohol, the presence of authority feeling the smell of the substance in a subjective way.
But smell is also put in second place by the preconceptions of modernity that put sight, written language and specialist reason as being the most important sense, mean of communication and form of knowledge, respectively -in order to give decisions more juridical security and safeness. This does not mean, absolutely, that a return to precedent ways of reasoning and expressing are necessarily better or more adequate: the world of social affairs has reached a degree of complexity that puts the subjectivity of authority and the search for the spiritual essence of things in a position that cannot be considered as fundamental categories.
Nonetheless, the conceptions that human olfaction is a inferior sense is being largely debunked by science. The modern dogmas on which the modern rationality started to be erected must be reviewed not only in hard sciences, but also in social and human ones. And juridical conceptions must be part of this process of revision, as a provocative and irritating dialogue between Law and Sciences (regarding the most current facts discovered) must also substitute the instrumental authority that characterizes current legal orders around the world.
Obviously, there are limitations in this research: other Brazilian Courts should have their jurisprudence regarding to smell and olfaction studied, in order to confirm again the results of this work. And also, those results should be compared to the jurisprudence of other countries, in order to verify the constance of these finds. But it cannot be denied that these preliminary discoveries can provoke very rich future works in an unfortunately almost non explored transdisciplinary field, which is, law and the senses in Court decisions.