This article takes up the debate on arguments that maintain that a process of judicialization of politics is currently underway in Brazil. It focuses on three goals: discussion of arguments on the judicialization of politics in Brazil, evaluation of empirical arguments on the process of judicialization and suggestions for new approaches to the topic. The literature on this issue borrows Tate and Vallinder's definition of the term: judicialization is the reaction of the Judiciary to the provocations of a third party and has as its goal the revision of a decision made by a political power taking the Constitution as its bases. In carrying out this revision, the Judiciary would be widening its power in relation to that of the other spheres of power. Our view argues that it is necessary to come up with a better way to structure the indicators of a possible judicialization of politics in Brazil. In order to back up our argument, we will take another look at the arguments developed in Tate and Vallinder's anthology, The Global Expansion of Judicial Power (1995). We intend to demonstrate that the arguments that these authors use do not exhaust the issue, but to the contrary: they just manage to initiate the debate. In this vein, we will develop an approach for understanding the reasons underlying the socalled expansion of judicial power. This will be followed by a brief analysis in which we will attempt to verify if the conditions for the emergence of a judicialization of politics, as observed in other countries, are also present in Brazil. Then we will go on to discuss the concept of the judicialization of politics and its empirical bases in our country. Finally, we will take a brief look at other possible approaches to this problem.
politics; judicialization of politics; institutions
