The so-called "judicialização" (judicialization) of political and social issues has provoked some debates on the access to justice and legitimacy of judicial decisions. In this context, during the debates that preceded the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, the Brazilian Small Claims Courts were thought as an institutional alternative to the central, burocratic and formalist State Judiciary. According to the spirit of the debates prevailing among the constituents and the constitutional prescription, the Small Claims Courts should dedicated to judge and resolve small claims and crimes, opening its composition to the participation of lay judges. In this research, we'll analyse the litigations at the Small Claims Courts of niterói, state of Rio de Janeiro, with the following goals: a) Contextualize the issue of legitimacy of the decisions of the Small Claims Courts, focusing on the opposition between the legitimacy of the legalism, burocraticism of the State justice and the democratic model of citizenship and justice; b) Establish comparative analyses between the Brazilian legal culture and the contemporary patterns of the Judiciary legitimacy; c) verify the effectiveness of the Small Claims Courts decisions.
small claims courts; justice; legitimacy
