The article analyzes the academic debate about judicial activism. It criticizes their focus on the problem of justices' individual autonomy in the decision-making process and their normative purpose in defining the Judiciary's proper role in a democratic constitutional order. The debate reduces the institutional dimension of tribunals and simplifies the relationships between judiciary practice and its political context. The article proposes a scheme for the analysis between judicial decisions and politics, based on the concepts of governmental regime and jurisprudential regime. The final section proposes a preliminary analysis of the changes in the judicial review of the STF after 1988.
Judicial activism; Brazilian Supreme Court; law and politics; political analysis of juridical thought
