Judicial attitudes under shifting jurisprudenceevidence from Brazil’s new drug law of 2006

Resumo

This paper exploits the diversity of panels at the court of appeals in the state of São
 Paulo to address the role of career backgrounds and ideology in shaping the response of
 judicial decisions to a major shift in jurisprudence on drug offenses. The Brazilian constitution
 reserves 80% of the seats in appellate courts to career judges, 10% to lawyers
 and 10% to prosecutors. In practice however, vacancies in panels coupled with backlogs
 have significantly increased participation of judges sitting by designation in appellate
 panels - who acted as rapporteurs in as much as 14% of all criminal appeals in Sao˜
 Paulo, between 2009-2013. Former lawyers and prosecutors are appointed by the state
 governor after nomination processes at the bar association and at the ministerial office.
 Judges sitting by designation are chosen at the discretion of the court’s highest council
 and do not retain prerogatives of tenured appellate judges and are typically hired with
 the purpose of reducing backlogs. Their performance affects their chances of being
 promoted to the court of appeals, relatively to similar judges that have not been designated.
 Based on a large dataset of criminal appeals related to drug offenses in the State
 São Paulo, Brazil, this study exploits the exogenous assignment of cases to rapporteurs,
 to identify the causal effects of career backgrounds on the response of appellate judges
 to a major shift in drug jurisprudence, which revoked the prohibition of conversion of
 confinement punishment in drug offenses introduced by the new drug law of 2006.
 Estimates of treatment-effects, conditional on case characteristics and panel-specific
 fixed-effects, confirm that career judges respond favorably to defendants, in line with
 the jurisprudence shift. Former prosecutors react against the shift, responding unfavorably
 to defendants. Former lawyers tend to exhibit a mixed behavior, weighing in their
 preferences as well as strategically favoring predominant “law and order” views. Finally
 sitting judges behave in a diffident fashion but also favoring prosecution.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Estudo

Ano

2021

Instituição

Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (Ipea)

Fonte

Repositório do Ipea

Idioma

Inglês

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.ipea.gov.br:11058/10610

Licença

Licença Comum

Abrangência

Brasil; 2006

Palavras-chave

Direito conforme a área de AplicaçãoJudicial desisionsJudicial biasJudges sitting by designationDrug offensesJurisprudence regimes