THE EFFICACY OF THE DECISIONS OF THE SUPREME FEDERAL COURT IN CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW

Abstract

In the current constitutionality control system prevailing in Brazil, decisions rendered incidentally to the verdict in a concrete case, which any court has competence to issue, coexist with a direct judgment, these being an exclusive attribution of the Supreme Federal Court. This Court, exercising its role as a guarantor of the Constitution, as defined by the very Magna Carta, represents not only a collegiate court inside the Judiciary structure, but also a true Constitutional Court. The objective of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of the (un)constitutionality decisions rendered by the Supreme Federal Court, trying to establish, in principle, the differences between those which originate from direct constitutional control from the ones which originate from incidental control, while analyzing primarily the legislative and jurisprudential changes that indicate a tendency of convergence between both.