Supreme Federal Court and Constitutional Change

Abstract

This paper discusses constitutional change in Brazil through the Supreme Federal Court's (STF) agenda and decision-making processes on abstract review lawsuits (Ações Diretas de Inconstitucionalidade). We analyze the content of initial petitions submittedby the parties, as well as existing decisions on these cases, in 115 lawsuits filed between 1988 and 2018 challenging constitutional amendments, in order to answer three descriptive questions: (i)which amendments were challenged before the STF, and which aspects of these amendments were disputed; (ii) which actors sought to limit and reshape constitutional change by challenging an amendment before the court; (iii) how the STF answered these challenges. The results show that the STF has been a relevant participant in processes of constitutional change, significantly interfering in the legislative output of amendments. The Court intervened in 20% of the cases, either by directly suspending the effects of amendment provisions or by modulating the substance of legislative changes through a “saving construction” of the amendment’s meaning. The data depicts the Court actively performing constitutional review of amendments, and it suggests that the most frequent beneficiaries of judicial intervention in these cases have been professional associations of civil servants.