Abstract
This paper has two goals. First, in dialogue with scholarly efforts to explain variations in the intensity of the Brazilian Supreme Court’s role in the political process, we propose a theoretical map that can account, in a more systematic fashion, for the different ways and mechanisms by which judicialization can take place. Second, we offer a typology of varieties of judicialization of politics that combines different mechanisms for accessing the court’s jurisdiction, and features of the court’s internal decision-making process. At one side of the spectrum, judicialization as a phenomenon would result from a combination of two collective decisions - a collective actor (such as a political party) triggering a collective decision by the STF. At the other side, it would result from a combination of two sets of individual decisions - an individual politician, for example, obtaining a favorable ruling or injunction by a single STF justice. Within this framework, we exemplify and discuss four understudied dimensions of the judicialization of politics: mechanisms of access to the STF beyond abstract review lawsuits (ADIs); appeals to the STF by individual politicians; appeals to the STF by members of the ruling coalition, which highlight the relevance of contingent political dynamics in judicialization strategies; the individual judicial powers and their implications for the political process.
Keywords:
Judicialization of politics; political decision-making process; judicial decision-making process; constitutional review