How far does the judiciary go? An evaluation of Labor Justice expansion in Brazil (2003–2010)

Abstract

This article tackles the following question: what factors determine the creation of Labor Courts in Brazil? According to constitutional criteria, population and judicial demand should guide the creation of judicial courts; however, the literature on access to justice claims that socioeconomic development could be the determinant. Considering that the expansion of the Labor Justice occurred in the last decades, it was possible to carry out a logistic regression model to test the effect of geographical, socioeconomic and demographic variables in the creation of units. The results indicate that the impact of the economically active population and the proportion of people in universities was relevant. Municipalities more distant from the existing judicial units and with fewer units in operation were taken into greater consideration in the expansion of the Labor Justice.

Labor Justice; judiciary; access to justice; judicial units; municipalities