BINDING PRECEDENTS IN BRAZIL: HOW COMMON LAW TRADITION CAN HELP BRING STABILITY AND COHERENCE

This article was written for the Berger International Speakers lecture given at Cornell University Law School on March 2018. It addresses – for an audience of American and international law students, as well as American law scholars – Brazil's current state regarding binding judicial precedents, the new Civil Procedure Code, as well as other interesting characteristics of its legal system.Alongside its description of Brazil's current state regarding binding precedents, the article addresses the country's abusive use of judicial dockets and other rule-like formulations and criticizes court-made rules in general. The article concludes by pointing out how some common law traditions can help Brazil to better implement a system of binding judicial precedents