Dialogical Constitutionalism Manifestations in the Brazilian Judicial Review

Abstract

The exponential growth in judicial review in Brazil, compared with the international scenery, is not out of tune – and it has a direct relation with many Brazilian constitutional features. An analytical text (with over 400 articles) and a large spectrum of fundamental rights, provide an ambience that favors highly intense controversy about State obligations in providing goods and public services, or even about the possible tensions that may arise between those same rights. The Brazilian Supreme Court faces that unmanageable number of lawsuits, notably related with claims regarding the non-granting of socioeconomic rights. That scenery is leading the Brazilian Supreme Court to some kind of experimentalism in the designing of its own rulings, applying techniques that can be easily associated with many manifestations of the so-called dialogical constitutionalism. All those experiences reveal that granting socioeconomic rights as a distributive justice goal requires a dialogic strategy in judicial review, in order to provide progressive implementation, preventing inequality. Still, those dialogic provisions face serious obstacles related with the menace of a merely symbolic use by the Judiciary and with a path of substitutive deliberation again by the Judiciary leading to reinforce Legislative inertia, social alienation from the debate and undermining democratic accountability. Adopting a dialogical constitutionalism model in Brazil might be a proper solution to allow its system to reach the functional development of the constitution’s goals – but it requires a deeper theoretical reflection.

From an idealized separation of powers to its practical problems in the Rule of Law

“…What is important is the manifestation of the most varied subjects, who must use the procedures inherent to the Rule of Law to have a political and legal voice, including the different powers. As such, we also believe that "the ratio of the separation of powers in democratic constitutional states is not the repression and facilitation of political power, but rather the organization of a model of law-making in which individual and democratic matters of self-determination gain equal recognition" 58 There are already some steps towards such dialogue in Brazil 59 , but it is facing ups and downs more than we would like. And if we simply understand dialogue as Revista de Investigações Constitucionais, Curitiba, vol.…”

Depois da “judicialização”: um mapa bibliográfico do Supremo

“…(h) Doutrina jurídica Mendes, 1996;Lourenço, 1998;Magalhães, 2000;Moraes, 2000;Souza, 2000;Binenbojm, 2001;Lima, 2001;Zavascki, 2001;Sampaio, 2002;Streck, 2002;Silva, 2003;Cruz, 2004;Moro, 2004;Teixeira, 2005;Leal, 2006;Leite, 2007;Paixão, 2007;Wang, 2008;Ferreira, 2009;Pessôa, 2009;Brandão, 2011Brandão, , 2014Miranda, 2012;Ferreira & Fernandes, 2013;Souza & Sarmento, 2013;Campos, 2014;Haddad & Quaresma, 2014;Valle, 2014;Barroso, 2015;Gomes, 2016;Maués, 2016;Ranieri, 2017;Barboza & Demetrio, 2019;Bernardo & Moraes, 2019;Paula et al, 2019. Fonte: elaborado pelo autor.…”

“…Mesmo na doutrina jurídica, entretanto, o conceito vem perdendo densidade. Muitos trabalhos já usam a "judicialização" para se referir a diferentes políticas públicas (Brandão, 2014;Valle, 2014;Ranieri, 2017;Barboza & Demetrio, 2019;Paula et al, 2019), em tendência similar às análises sobre o impacto do Supremo em normas federais. De modo convergente, Bernardo e Moraes (2019) usam "judicialização" como sinônimo de ajuizamento.…”

Os desacordos de moralidade política entre executivo e judiciário: uma análise do recurso extraordinário nº 657.718/MG

“…O Judiciário pode atuar de forma consentânea à separação de poderes, sem formular políticas públicas, e, ao mesmo tempo, promover a concretização dos direitos fundamentais 43 . Dessa forma, os diálogos institucionais visam solucionar problemas coletivos, evitando que o poder da última palavra se centre, exclusivamente, no Judiciário 44 .…”