New Challenges of Constitutional Adjudication in Brazil

**To read the Special Report written by Gilmar Mendes, please click on the cover image to the left or scroll down to the report link at the bottom of the page. Below is a brief summary of the event's proceedings.**
Adopted in 1988, after 21 years of military rule, Brazil's Constitution guarantees a comprehensive set of fundamental rights to its citizens. It also gives great freedom to Brazil's Federal Supreme Court to conduct judicial review. In the last decade, the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF)—the highest court in the country—has been "compelled to act" to compensate for administrative and legislative omissions concerning the extensive social agenda in the Constitution.
Compared to other legal systems worldwide, Brazil is "doing pretty well," remarked Messitte. In the last few years, Brazil has enacted major constitutional reforms, including adopting the concepts of precedent (sumula vinculante) and discretionary review (repercussão geral) for the STF. It has gone beyond constitutional reform by institutionalizing judicial changes (for example, the Ministry of Justice created a department of judicial reform); expanding legal access through its justiça volante initiative, which literally "brings the court system" to distant populations in the Amazon and the interior of the country; and developing an efficient and effective small claims courts. This report, written by Minister Gilmar Mendes, is an abbreviated version of his 30-page article on the same topic of constitutional adjudication.
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