Seventeen years of judicializing politics

Abstract

This article studies the judicialization of politics in Brazil, based on an analysis of a database containing 3.648 ADINs filed between 1988 and 2005. Examining this data, the overall impression gained is that ADINs are now a normal part of the everyday running of the modern Brazilian democracy, their institutional presence consolidated over almost two decades through successive and different governments - and even more firmly in the current Lula government. Over this time, they have functioned as a channel for the conflicts between society and the State, as well as conflicts within the Public Administration and the Federation. Hence, as well as being an instrument for the defence of minorities, their original constitutional function, the research shows that the ADINs are also a strategic institutional resource for government, turning the Federal Supreme Court in practice into a kind of Council of State prevalent in countries with unitary governments.