Backlash in brazilian law

main legislative reactions

Abstract

The Judiciary is often provoked to speak out on extremely controversial issues, which divide both public opinion and that of government officials and parliamentarians. The decisions rendered in such cases can generate reactions of discontent on the part of society, the Legislative Branch and the Executive, who uses different means to demonstrate their insurgency against the result presented by the judges. These adverse reactions are called backlash, an expression attributed to the phenomenon mentioned by american law. In this article, an analysis of what backlash is will be carried out, as well as what were the main legislative reactions verified in Brazilian law until today. The research used the hypothetical-deductive method, based on the constitutional theory on the influence of external factors in judicial decisions, to then analyze the specific case of the occurrence of legislative reactions to two decisions issued by the Supreme Federal Court. The research techniques used consist of bibliographic and jurisprudential research. Finally, it is concluded that the backlash phenomenon is of paramount importance in a Democratic State, as long as there is an active constitutional court exercising the countermajoritarian role.