Crisis, reform and legitimation: The Judiciary's claims of legitimacy under the managerial paradigm

• Grant number: 25/02938-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: September 01, 2025
• End date: April 30, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Sergio França Adorno de Abreu
• Grantee: Thiago Filippo Silva Jorge
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 13/07923-7 - Center of the Study of Violence - NEV/USP, AP.CEPID

Abstract

The proposed research project aims to contribute to the understanding of the legitimation strategies undertaken by the Judiciary and what they can reveal about the relationships the institution builds between itself and the public and with the remaining public institutions. The analytical possibility is inspired both by the state of the art studies of the changes in judicial work and a initial incursion on the topic in a post-doctoral research period at NEV-USP/CEPID/FAPESP "Building Democracy Daily: Human rights, Violence and Institutional Trust". The body of literature points out that, since the 1990s, a series of criticisms directed towards the judiciary have emerged, constituting the idea of "judicial crisis". The criticisms considered both its role as a public service, considered slow and inefficient, and its political role, seen as elitist and inaccessible, and that its over-emphasis on independence and autonomy to its courts and judges led to an overwhelming variety of conflicting decisions, causing legal uncertainty. The main proposal to combat the crisis, a reform with the creation of a body of external control, was, through negotiations with the judiciary itself, mitigated. The reform, started by the Constitutional Amendment 45 of 2004 and sustained by the National Council of Justice and the courts, represents a change in the dynamics of judicial work, here classified analytically as the "managerial paradigm". The studies point out that, besides emphasizing the institutional agenda, the judicial reform represented a change in judicial work that rendered it less sensitive to the interests of citizens. The proposed project aims to comprehend the emerging paradigm of judicial work through administrative sessions of the Special Organ of the Tribunal of Justice of São Paulo, in administrative disciplinary proceedings against judges that are considered "improductive". In these sessions, the objects of analysis will be both the contents of the proceedings, as constitutive elements of the judicial paradigms, as well the discourses directed to the external public, in which the judges formulate on the foundations and purposes of their activities. The two analytical groups contribute to the investigation of the possibility that the administrative sessions are part of the self-legitimation strategies the judiciary uses to affirm its right to self-governance of its activities. (AU)