Abstract
Is the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) an “individualistic” institution? In three decades of academic studies and public debates, the theme of a court as divided as its number of judges has recurred. This theme has been summarized in various images, the most popular of which is “eleven islands”. But there is less consensus in the field than the widespread and recurrent use of this metaphor suggests. In this paper, we have identified at least six possible meanings of “individualism” in interpretations and criticisms of the court’s functioning - some of them focusing on actions of individual judges within the collegiate body, and others focusing on individual behavior beyond and outside the collective decision-making process. Without clarity about these different readings and their specific truth conditions as descriptions of the STF, the malleability of images about the nature or functioning of the institution becomes problematic. In this paper, drawing on two decades of empirical and normative work on the STF, we aim to contribute to diagnoses of the court’s functioning by articulating a conceptual framework: (1) of the different possible ways in which the STF can be “individualistic”, (2) of the different truth conditions for empirical claims and studies involving hypotheses on each of such dimensions, and (3) of the different aspects of institutional design related to the dimensions.
Keywords:
Supreme Federal Court; judicial decision-making; institutional design; judicial behavior; constitutional law