Dissenting votes on the Brazilian Supreme Court
Dissenting votes on the Brazilian Supreme Court
We examine dissent on the Brazilian Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) using a novel dataset of 2.23 million individual votes in over 420,000 collegiate decisions issued between 1988 and 2023. After discussing the particularities of the Court’s processes and the individual minister characteristics and institutional features potentially influencing incentives to dissent, we examine the effects of several different elements on likelihood of individual dissenting votes. Our findings suggest that jurisdiction type, collegiate body, legal complexity, ideology, case salience and the relationship between case reporter and dissenter all play non-trivial roles. We also find that exposure to the legal academy in common law jurisdictions is correlated with an increased propensity to dissent and that two-thirds of the Court’s dissenting votes are attributable to a single member, Minister Marco Aurélio. Finally, we discuss the more nuanced impacts of several additional factors including televised hearings, virtual sessions, and gender.
judicial behaviour, dissent, collegiality, Brazilian supreme court, judicial career
Rosevear, Evan
5459603c-339c-4452-b091-a62f9986cf11
Hartmann, Ivar A.
d927df14-2498-4a5e-8ec5-dd30d6a04f6d
Arguelhes, Diego Werneck
963c5a75-dd15-41cc-b751-e0fb0ade77c1
31 December 2024
Rosevear, Evan
5459603c-339c-4452-b091-a62f9986cf11
Hartmann, Ivar A.
d927df14-2498-4a5e-8ec5-dd30d6a04f6d
Arguelhes, Diego Werneck
963c5a75-dd15-41cc-b751-e0fb0ade77c1
Rosevear, Evan, Hartmann, Ivar A. and Arguelhes, Diego Werneck
(2024)
Dissenting votes on the Brazilian Supreme Court.
Journal of Law & Empirical Analysis, 1 (2).
(doi:10.1177/2755323X2412963).
Abstract
We examine dissent on the Brazilian Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) using a novel dataset of 2.23 million individual votes in over 420,000 collegiate decisions issued between 1988 and 2023. After discussing the particularities of the Court’s processes and the individual minister characteristics and institutional features potentially influencing incentives to dissent, we examine the effects of several different elements on likelihood of individual dissenting votes. Our findings suggest that jurisdiction type, collegiate body, legal complexity, ideology, case salience and the relationship between case reporter and dissenter all play non-trivial roles. We also find that exposure to the legal academy in common law jurisdictions is correlated with an increased propensity to dissent and that two-thirds of the Court’s dissenting votes are attributable to a single member, Minister Marco Aurélio. Finally, we discuss the more nuanced impacts of several additional factors including televised hearings, virtual sessions, and gender.
Text
JLEA-23-0010.R2_Proof_hi
- Accepted Manuscript
Text
rosevear-et-al-2024-dissenting-votes-on-the-brazilian-supreme-court
- Version of Record
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 7 October 2024
e-pub ahead of print date: 29 November 2024
Published date: 31 December 2024
Keywords:
judicial behaviour, dissent, collegiality, Brazilian supreme court, judicial career
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 496885
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/496885
ISSN: 2755-323X
PURE UUID: 1cdaec56-2052-41c7-83ad-d09f9cb353cf
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 08 Jan 2025 11:31
Last modified: 21 Aug 2025 02:47
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Author:
Evan Rosevear
Author:
Ivar A. Hartmann
Author:
Diego Werneck Arguelhes
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics