An Analysis of the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court (STF)’ Judging Standard on Direct Actions of Inconstitutionality between 2010 and 2019

Abstract

The present work has the following problem: what was the standard of judgment on political decisions by the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court (STF), in the context of Direct Actions of Unconstitutionality (ADIs), between the years 2010 and 2019? ADIs are adopted as an analysis variable because they allow the removal of democratic decisions from the legal order, and also because they make up the majority of concentrated constitutionality control actions in the period considered. First, a bibliographic review is made on the standard of judgment on political decisions by the STF. Then, descriptive statistics instruments are adopted to understand the phenomenon in Brazil. It seeks to resume the study of how the Brazilian Supreme Court judgment on political decisions in ADIs took place in the last decade. To this end, it is replicated the model study of authors Pogrebinschi (2011) and Vianna et al. (1999, 2007), in a time frame between the years 2010 and 2019, to understand whether, after a decade of the studies by the aforementioned authors, there was a change in the standard of judgment of the STF in relation to ADIs. The conclusion is that, in spite of the fact that the STF acted with restraint, the ministers were not restrained.

Democratic constitutionalism; Judicial Power; Brazilian Federal Supreme Court; Direct Actions of Unconstitutionality; judgment on political decisions