Remote Brazilian Supreme Court: The Rise of the Virtual Trials after the Pandemic

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the impacts of the rise of the virtual environment of asynchronous trial sessions, as adopted by the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court after the pandemic. To this end, it firstly focuses on the features of each type of electronic judgment, as well as highlights the increase of productivity in quantitative terms. After that, it discusses aspects regarding deliberative concerns, agenda-setting control and judicial behaviour that result from this institutional turn. The study concludes that, apart from tackling the pendent workload, it could enhance the capacity of the Court not only to quickly decide urgent proceedings but also to preventing atomistic performance. However, as a result of the trade-off between efficiency and genuine collegial interaction, it argues that criticisms over the deliberative process of aggregation remain unsolved. In the same vein, it points that there is no clear rule yet regarding this kind of hybrid model, that is to say, whether and why a case will be selected to be decided in the new virtual stye or in the so far standard physical, synchronous and broadcasted trial sessions.