Entre a supremacia e o diálogo: uma análise das proposições legislativas sobre a fidelidade partidária à luz das decisões do Supremo Tribunal Federal (2007-2012)

No ano de 2007, o Supremo Tribunal Federal modificou sua jurisprudência, que se mantinha inalterada desde 1988, e passou a entender pela existência do princípio da fidelidade partidária no ordenamento jurídico. Essa decisão foi criticada como um exemplo de Ativismo e de Supremacia Judicial. Com base em um estudo das proposições em tramitação no Congresso Nacional, identificamos como o Legislativo tem oferecido respostas à matéria. A partir desse estudo, se questiona se a teoria da Supremacia Judicial é mais adequada do que a teoria dos Diálogos Constitucionais para descrever a relação entre o Judiciário e o Legislativo no caso da fidelidade partidária.

Sacredness of the constitutional text and interpretative heresy: the Brazilian Supreme Court decision on same-sex civil unions

The paper provides a close lecture of the arguments and methods of legal construction, employed in the extensive individual opinions written by the Justices of the Brazilian Supreme Court in the case which authorized the same sex civil union. After tracing an outline of the legal problem and his possible solutions, we analyze the individual opinions, showing their methodological syncretism, the use of legal methods and arguments in a contradictory way as well the deficiencies in the reasoning. The Justices use legal arguments, but do not meet the requirements of rationality in the decision-making. We have a rhetorical attempt that aims to satisfy the public opinion than to offer a comprehensive and coherent solution according the normative elements of the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988.

Construction of facilities under asymmetric information: do constitutional constraints matter?

This paper studies construction of facilities in a federal state under asymmetric information. A country consists of two regions, each ruled by a local authority. The federal government plans to construct a facility in one of the regions. The facility generates a local value in the host region and has spillover effects in the other region. The federal government does not observe the local value because it is the local authority's private information. 80 the federal governrnent designs an incentive-compatible mechanism, specifying if the facility should be constructed and a balanced scheme of interregional transfers to finance its cost. The federal governrnent is constitutionally constrained to respect a given leveI of each region's welfare. We show that depending upon the facility's local value and the spillover effect, the governrnent faces different incentive problems. Moreover, their existence depends crucially on how stringent constitutional constraints are. Therefore, the optimal mechanism will also depend upon these three features of the model.