Brazilian Supreme Court and Federalism: Before and During the Pandemic

Abstract

This paper investigated how the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF) used to understand division of powers in federative matters before the covid-19 pandemic, which was mainly centralized and based on the nebulous criterion of the predominance of interests for federative conflicts resolution. Then, we conducted a data survey about the STF decisions on conflicts of competences between federated entities. The time cut was from March 2020 to January 2021. The judicial process cut, totaling 93 actions, occurred in the abstract concentrated control actions, for having general and binding effects, and in the civil actions based on the primary competence of the Brazilian Supreme Court, which are intended to resolve federative conflicts. We concluded that the STF works was mostly decentralized since they adopted a renewed understanding about the right to health. This allowed greater autonomy for states and municipalities to define several topics. However, we noticed that the indeterminate principle of the predominance of interests was maintained as a defining criterion for federative conflicts, especially in matters relating to state laws that granted discounts on tuition from private educational institutions (ADIs 6,435, 6,423 and 6,575) and in state laws that allowed state public servants to suspend the payment of voluntary consignment (ADIs 6,484, 6,451 and 6,495).