ASSESSMENT OF COURT FEES’ REGULATION AND ITS CORRELATION WITH THE LEVEL OF JUDICIALIZATION: EVIDENCE OF BRAZILIAN STATE COURTS FROM 2009 TO 2018

Abstract

The economic analysis of the litigation proposes a theoretical model that identify the factors that influence agents’ decision-making about whether to turn to the Judiciary when faced with a conflict. According to this normative model, the low cost of court fees may constitute an incentive to judicialization. The purpose of this paper is to verify whether court fees’ price variation can influence lawsuits quantity. Specifically, it is an empirical test about the existence of a correlation between the change in the state regulation of court fees and the level of judicialization, measured on the percentage change in the number of cases in the subsequent year. It was adopted a quantitative and descriptive approach, considering the data on court fees and the number of cases from Brazilian’s state courts, between the years 2009 to 2018. Through a statistical test of difference of means, it was possible to identify that reductions in court fees are related to an average increase of 6% in the number of cases in the following year. As for the court fees increases, it was not possible to identify a relationship with reductions in the number of cases.

Keywords
Law and Economics; regulation; court fees; judicial efficacy; litigation rates