O Modelo decisório do STF: déficit de deliberação, colegialidade e a formação dos precedentes

Abstract

This study examines the democratic legitimacy of Brazilian constitutional adjudication through the lens of the Federal Supreme Court’s (STF) deliberative performance, investigating the extent to which the seriatim decision-making model, marked by the juxtaposition of individual opinions, undermines collegial rationality and the integrity of precedent. The research adopts a theoretical-analytical and bibliographical methodology, grounded in deliberative democratic theory and the doctrine of judicial precedent, to diagnose how the current practice of aggregating individual preferences obstructs the formation of a coherent institutional will. The findings indicate that the “eleven islands” culture, combined with the rapporteur’s unilateral powers and the dynamics of the Virtual Plenary, produces fragmentation of the ratio decidendi, complicating the identification of determinative grounds and weakening legal certainty. The study concludes that institutional reforms are required to foster a transition towards a more deliberative model, with incentives for genuine argumentative exchange and a preference for judgments delivered in a unified institutional voice (per curiam) or through a majority opinion, so as to ensure that the Court functions as a true court of precedents capable of offering public reasons that are universalizable and stable within the legal order.