Abstract:
This study aimed to analyze the Brazilian award policy established by the National
Council of Justice (CNJ) since 2013, which rewards various courts in categories such
as “Diamond,” “Gold,” “Silver,” “Bronze,” and, starting in 2024, “Excellence,” for the
best institution in each category. At the same time, courts across the country have
also been awarding their judges annually in categories such as “Diamond,” “Gold,”
“Silver,” or “Bronze.” The main criterion for calculating the honor is productivity, which
essentially considers the reduction of the case backlog and the reduction of the
average processing time of the cases. The regulation of the competition is governed
by the CNJ itself, without significant participation from civil society— nor even from
OAB (Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil, the Brazilian Bar Association) — or the
inclusion of evaluation criteria such as the material quality of case management and
the satisfaction of parties and lawyers with the functioning of the judiciary. Thus, in a
scenario marked by the particularities inherent to each case, judges and their
respective courts are objectively evaluated based mainly on numerical and statistical
criteria, disregarding the unique and unrepeatable nature of judicial decisions. In
parallel, this stimulus to productivity—through competition and positive reinforcement
to judges and courts that achieve notable productivity—comes without any material
investment to improve the quality of judicial services. This reflects a neoliberal
perspective in which the blame for the slowness of the judiciary is shifted to the
individuals who operate it, disregarding other factors such as the lack of greater
public investment or, at the very least, more rational budget allocation. This scenario
worsens with initiatives from states such as Rio Grande do Sul, which pay bonuses
to court employees conditioned on obtaining the CNJ award (State Law No. 16,016,
of October 31, 2023). Therefore, this paper examined the (im)possibility of treating
judicial decisions as statistically and numerically comparable for productivity
purposes, the risks of their potential distortion in this process, and the social
consequences of this competition encouraged by the public authorities. The analysis
was developed particularly in light of Mangabeira Unger’s thinking on democracy, the
lack of institutional boldness of the courts, and the need to rethink the role of judges
in society.
